#stump day

“We don't celebrate thanksgiving over here but we do have our own version called Stump Day,” Lanolin explained.

“And lore-masters Knuckles and Lanolin are here to explain it all to you!” Knuckles shouted, scaring the hell out of Lanolin.

“GAAH! Where did you come from?!” She shouted.

“The Master Emerald but we're not here to talk about that we're here to talk about Stump Day,” he said very matter of factly. “I'll start explaining the origins of it.”

“I clearly don't have a say in this so I'll just play along,” Lanolin chuckled tiredly.

Knuckles began, “The story is so old that there's a bunch of different versions of it and no one can really agree what's the true one so we'll just do our best to explain it all to you. A long time ago there was a village that was centered around a tremendous tree stump. It was so massive it could be used not only as a giant banquet table but also a stage. How the tree was felled in the first place is a whole separate myth that we won't be getting into. Anyway, the people of this village always near end of fall would have a great feast from the harvest atop the stump. but one day when they were all preparing the goods there was a series of catastrophes they each and every one of them suffered ruining the food they had prepared. Like one guy tripped and dropped his entire cart of tomatoes down a cliff, one guy was foiled by a bunch of ravenous flickeys that ate all his corn and there was a guy who got struck by lightning so he couldn't finish his baking. Everyone has their own versions of what each person in this village went through. Some people only list a few, some people can recount all of them but no one version is the same for every person. Some say all this misfortune was caused by nefarious spirits. Maybe they offended some deity. Or maybe it was just pure terrible coincidental bad luck. Again, it depends on who's telling the story. As they all sat down glum about their terrible luck they still brought what they could to the table unleavened bread, a handful of tomatoes, some dried fruit, again depending on who's telling the story,” Knuckles pointed at his fellow lore-master.

Now Lanolin took over with a smile, “The next part though is the part everyone can agree on. For a moment there was silence but then all at once they all started laughing. The pure terrible luck was so terrible that it circled back to being hilarious. They laughed and laughed and laughed and they began eating and celebrating. Finding joy in their misfortune but also the fortune they have to know each other. They sang and ate and with so little food on the stump they were able to dance atop it. But then something miraculous happened and you guessed it this next part depends on who you ask because there are a bunch of different versions of it. One story goes that some spirit or deity saw their joy and their misfortune and decided to give them a brand new feast. Some stories say it's Light Gaia, some say Arcadia, some say it was some spirit with too many eyes and too many hands called Wandagood which I thought for sure was just the Wandering God but then there's an old Mazuri story about something called Wandagood who sounds very different so somebody either traveled there or there was there just a loss of translation or was it the name got garbled over time and we'll never know for sure because two hundred some years ago some marauding assholes burned down half the country erasing all the records THAT WOULD'VE EXPLAINED IT!”

Knuckles looked on in concern as the sheep caught her breath, “You good?”

She sighed, “Yeah I'm fine, lemme continue. A much less supernatural rendition of the story is that a caravan of wealthy merchants were traveling by and heard the commotion. They came over and asked them why they were celebrating over so little. The villagers told them the whole story and the merchants were so moved that they sold their stocked goods to them at extremely cheap prices and decided to help make this small no name village into a great city. Depending on who you ask this either became Central City, Emerald City, Sunset City or Seaside City. Honestly every major city lays claim to the story and sometimes take it way too seriously. I somehow doubt this story more than a supernatural ones because if there's one thing I know about rich people is that they suddenly don't get a chance of heart and make their new home in the middle of nowhere. But what we know for sure is that the story traveled far and wide across mobian lands and here we are. In short, Stump Day is where we celebrate the positive attitude of making the best of a bad situation and give thanks for what we have.”

“Oh but where is it celebrated Lore-Master Lanolin,” Knuckles asked with a wink.

Smiling at his antics, she continued, “It's less popular in cities but everywhere else everyone celebrates when it comes around. Some people even have their own stump they keep.”

This was something Knuckles didn't know, “They do?”

“Yeah but it's more ceremonial. I mean there's no way everyone can keep a giant stump like they do in the story. Some people take the stump very seriously. My uncle told me a story about how one guy burnt someone else's stump and the ground swallowed them whole right then and there. He said the gods were angry at what he did so he was punished. only much later in life did I learn that the area where it happened was an area known for sinkholes so I'm not sure if I was the gods or not,” she said.

Knuckles rubbed his chin, “Weird, I heard a similar story only instead of sinking through the ground, the guy just spontaneously combusted right then and there. But yeah it's not something you wanna, you know, stress test.”

She nodded with a grimace, “For sure, especially the kind of world we live in.”

“What does your family do?” he asked.

With a far away nostalgic look, Lanolin went down memory lane, “Every year there was some sort of fight in my family about whether to serve meat or not. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family didn't want to serve meat as they believed it was offensive, sacrilegious even, to Arcadia. In their version of the story, Arcadia made a massive bounty of fruits, vegetables and mushrooms appear on the stump after seeing their joy. But my mom and only my mom thought that was silly and we should use any kind of bounty the land gives us. If that seems uneven it really wasn't it, my mom had the stubbornness of twenty people. Some years my mom would come out on top and then some years my dad's side of the family would come out on top. It really depended on who got sick of the fighting sooner,” she finished with a smile.

Knuckles held up his hands in surprise, “Woah back up I didn't know people still worshiped Arcadia?”

She nodded, “Oh yeah sure it's more of a rural thing but we even still celebrate the Spring festival. Hell, the medal you win for winning the flower contest has her face on it which again some people find sacrilegious.”

“Huh neat……so what are your plans for Stump Day? Same as usual?” Knuckles asked, unaware of the minefield he just walked into.

Suddenly looking very uncomfortable, Lanolin looked away before speaking, “Uh no not really there has been some changes in my family and the only person I can really talk to is my uncle.”

Knuckles, despite his reputation of being thick headed, was able to read through the lines and sympathy swelled within him, “You know if you want, you and everyone else can come over to my island on Stump Day. I do have a giant stump we can use. You can even bring your uncle if you want.”

Lanolin couldn't be more moved by his offer, “I……I would like that very much. Thank you Knuckles.”

Ah the fitful sleep and the fire engines That I dream of when I dream Some day we'll both wake up for good I will try hard not to scream The evening wind will shake the blinds You're stirring from your slumber We've got something hateful on our minds

Stump Day

This magical festival, Sunnia believes in the existence of "stump" (even her childhood nightmare xd), because she has heard stories about stump from her parents.

Before we start a special credit to @jess-the-vampire​ who I discussed the episode with during the writing process and brought up a LOT of good points that ended up going into this review. She clearly hates it as much as I do and had even more good reasons for it.  Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everybody! And today we got a big, fat, grotesque lump of coal to smash to pieces. And after a long, draining, if worth the effort scrooge review, and with this being something I needed to cross off my to do list this holiday season, I put this one here as I could use the cathariss of giving this steaming bowl of elephant piss a good thrashing. As you can tell unlike my usual reviews, I do not like this episode. This isn’t the FIRST i’ve not liked i’ve covered, but it is the first rather infamous one to me i’ve covered and not just a dead possum of an episode I ran into while reguarly covering an otherwise good show like “Quaraller’s Pass” or “Strife of the Party”. This one’s had it coming, making my top 8 worst christmas specials list last year, and while not the series worst outing, that’s a toss up between the finale and marco jr, it’s easily one of them. So while usually I like diving deeply into something good and picking apart while it’s good, if not ignoring any bad aspects, here i’m just going to take a hammer to this thing to explain why it dosen’t work and why it sucks dirty ass in thunderstorms. I might be overstating it a bit but probably not.  Nothing really new has happened since the last episode so the only new thing to cover is why i’m doing the episode here instead of after Monster Bash. And the simple reason is that like the Ducktales Halloween and Christmas specials, this episode clearly does not take place in the same time frame of the episode before or after it, with the next episode, The Bog Beast of Bogabah, taking place the day after Monster Bash. It’s most likely they simply held this episode over till Christmas and it dosen’t really fit in AFTER the huge game changer that is monster bash, especailly since the next three episodes after this all take place in rapid sucession, two on the same day one the day after them. So yeah i’m doing this one first and putting it ahead of monster bash on my episode guide for clarity’s sake. 

Good, so with all that settled, let’s unwrap this complete works of pauly shore shall we? We open on the titular Stump Day, essentially mewni’s christmas complete with Cocoa, carols and a gay couple and their equally adorable child. And Star, unsuprisingly is giddy for it as the actual chlidren, and wearing an adorable santaesque dress complete with horns on her santa hat. Seriously you cannot tell me tom didn’t get that for her. Fucking precious. Marco is more just confused and has his hood up and one of Star’s cousins asks uncle river to tell him the origin of stump day. River’s response.. is easily the best joke of the episode. 

“(in a jolly tone) ha ha, you don’t tell me what to do”

He does so anyway though: Basically when settlers arrived on Mewni they found themselves cold and griping with each other, and soon found a blizzard had struck.. but by huddling together under a magic stump, they all learned to get along or something like that and now once a year everyone gathers in warmth and camraderie.. or else. Before Marco can understandably question what “or else” means in this context, Star butts in when one of her cousins chastises the younger one who asked river the question for beliviing and says he’s real. It’s a nice touch as it fits star perfectly to still belivie in mewni’s horrifying version of santa. I forgot just how adorable and likeable the character was before the final season shot that to hell. How her energy could be infectious and how Eden Sher really brought her all to the performance, which is still the performance of her career and hopefully like Rider Strong she’ll do more voice acting eventually.  So that night as Star tucks in after wonderful  night of sleep, and to avoid her dad’s usual drunken chorus of Tom Jones “Sex Bomb”, and gets woken up by Marco who leads her to the dining hall because a windows broken to fix it with magic. Star entirely buys this flimsy story.. but as Jess pointed out, and as I missed hence the credit up top... she dosen’t bring her wand. She.. dosen’t bring her wand.. to go fix something with magic. Now i’ll grant next season shows she CAN fully do magic without it, and while not as powerful like her mom still has plenty of punch behind it.. especially when she does the rainbow fist thing. But it’s still.. weird she dosen’t think to grab it and feels out of character. While Star’s learned by this point not to rely on it, and as we’ll see gives it up entirely, one of the few bits of her character development that actually sticks, it still seems resonable she’d take it with her wherever she goes.. and usually SHE DOES. And her jammies, which are also adorable, seem to have pockets so the animators had no reason to not just stuff it in one. It would’ve made their job harder yes.. but then don’t have marco use an excuse that directly requires it then and draws attention to the fact the wand is missing, and the fact you blatantly just hoped we’d forget about it as it’d ruin the climax. 

It’s far from the worst thing in this episode..trust me we’re almost there. But this does bring me to a point.. so far the episode is GOOD. The comedy’s good, the setup for what’s about to happen is good, the holdiay setting is warm and inviting but weird enough to perfectly fit mewni, and River, much like his VA and homosexual talking boat portrayer Alan Tudyuk, is a national treasure as always. Whelp it’s all down hill from here bitches! Giddyup. 

So Marco announces a SUPRISE PARTY! And everyone’s there: Tom, Kelly, Ponyhead, Starfan14... oh yeah this is the first ep i’ve coverd with Starfan14 isn’t it? Starfan14 is star’s insane fangirl, voiced by series creator Derfron Nercy herself, who star happily tolerates despite clearly wanting to wear her skin. We’ve all been there. Also Jackie is transparently missing, though at least it’s SOMEWHAT reasonable as she and marco broke up a few .. months ago? I mean it is winter on mewni for this episode but the end of season 4 and the series is set at the start of summer, yet months still pass..... 

Confusing timeline aside, Jackie has every reason not to attend a party thrown by her ex for the girl who confesed she had feelings for said ex and it’s probably the only good decision Marco makes this entire episode that he wisely decided to give Jackie some space. And it says something a decision made entirely off screen that was probably because the creators genuinely forgot Jackie once she was out of the way so they could shift the love triangle stuff to Tom, Star and Marco instead of you know.. not doing that because most love triangles are annoying at best and utterly insufferable at worst. Case in point this episode but I can give out more about this aspect of things in a bit with more context. 

And to his credit, and as Jess backed me up on, Marco’s gesture is genuinely throughtful.. at least to start with. He got her a choclate fountain, brought all of her friends, and geninely just thought Star never celebrated her birthday on her birthday because it was you know the same day as christmas. As someone whose birthday is a week before christmas, December 16th if you were curious, I understand the pain of having your birthday in the same month as christmas. Of having all your presents clustered at once and of having to manuver around a very stressful season, though it does sometimes have perks like getting to celebrate your birthday and christmas, it also means your birthday is secondary and always will be to most people due to proximity. And Star has hers ON mewman christmas, so it’s even worse. So from Marco’s perspective, TO START, his best friend constantly had to share her birthday with her faviorite holiday and just wanted to do something nice. SO FAR, he’s done nothing wrong and just means well. That’s... about to end.  Star.. instead of being greatful.. starts muttering no before going on an manic rampage and destroying everything including hte band’s insturments. And apparnetly star’s gotten some flack for her behavior.. but I understand it. To her the stump is VERY real, and will be very angry if someone else celebrates so to her all she’s doing is saving her best friend from the holiday equilvent of the trees from evil dead, and when Marco asks about it she GENUINELY is sorry, getting he meant well, that he was being sweet, and that he did a lot of nice stuff for her.. she just can’t celebrate not because she loves the holiday but because again, from her persepctive, the stump will kill them all if they don’t support it. She is genuinly affraid for her friends lives and given she could go grab her wand and fight it, clearly thinks she, with all her CONSIDERABLE powers, cannot win this, and neither can tom whose powers are almost entirely fire based. Star is just trying to protect her friends from being horribly murdered. And she turns out to be entirely right about it so no, star was not a jerk here. A bit over the top, but she was not insensitive, she was not mean, she just didn’t want a party for understandable reasons.

So let’s get to actually insensitive shall we?! Marco’s reaction to this is at first confusion as he didn’t realize the stump was real, though Tom, Kelly and Pony are convinced it’s not. Also this episode implies Kelly is from mewni, but she turns out not to be so why she knows about the stump I genuinely don’t know. They think it’s just a baby thing.. though in Tom’s defense he dosen’t phrase it that way, thinks star still beliving is cute, which for a teenage boy finding out his girlfriend belivies in santa is very sweet and mature of him, and is trying to be nice about it even if he doesn’t believe.  But Marco.. his response to his friend having a good reason for not wanting to have the party.. is to complain about how much effort he put into it and try to guilt and bribe her into having it by mentoining he got her faviorite cake flavor, rainbow. Just.. WOW. I’ve seen some bad turns from characters, but WOWWWWWW. Holy shit.. I mean at least other jerkass marco episodes before this had SOME reasoning to them. Sophmore Slump had him clearly sublimating his feelings for star combined with the usual obnoxiousness of someone having gone abroard for the first time, which as Letterkenny recently went into, the only thing worse is Stillborn Puppies. Nothing else. 

And with Lint Catcher while he was presumptive and not blameless.. river still outright lied to him. Here? It’s clear star dosen’t want this, cake can be refigirated, he only takes a loss on the choclate fountain and he could still just let everyone have some and say it’s for stump day to appease her. He dosen’t have to take a loss on this finacially or morally and there would be no harm done. But that’s.. not what HE wanted, not waht HE set up and he wants what HE wanted, which was to impress star with a thoughtful gesture. But that’s the thing bud: Gestures aren’t about you or what you get. Their about doint something nice for another fucking person. It’s the whole point of christmas and birthdays: To just give someone something to be ncie and to celebrate the day and them respectively. If she dosen’t WANT your gift for understandable reasons and isn’t being rude about it you don’t have any leg to stand on you seflish twatwaffle. 

So already Marco is not coming off well.. and if you know this episode you know it gets worse. Oh god it gets worse. So first PONYHEAD of all people calls out Marco.. and for once, PONYHEAD, the most selfish, most unresonable and a character whose tolerablity varies on the episode, tells him he’s being selfish and is only pressing on because of his need to control things. So not only is Ponyhead right but the episode LIKELY wants you to feel she’s wrong because she’s pony which is not how this work as she knows star well and thus, while unaware she still belivied in the stump, which tracks as while it’s obvious she does Pony is so up her own whatever she has that functions as an ass, it’s understandable she’d miss some details. So no Pony’s right, and the fact PONY is one of the more resonable people in this episode is both a sign of the apocalypse, which is thankfully starting to recede, and a clear marker of just how bad Marco’s being if someone who torments him and disagrees with him out of principal is entirely right. 

Oh but it gets worse as next up, Tom steps in and tries to get Marco to back out, admitting he told him this was a bad idea. Now granted Tom did mess up by not stepping in to stop this a bit.. but he A) didn’t know how much his girlfriend genuinely belivied in the stump and B) Probably assumed Marco meant well, as would I before he whined about not getting his way, and decided it was worth a try. So he’s not that bad, and while it is a bit ehhh to try and take back credit for this when he participated, it’s still minor and Marco is still being a huge dick who refuses to help shut things down when it’s clear the party is only causing star to have a panic attack and assault some humble marachi players. He sees nothing good is coming from this and just wants what star wants. Also it paints Marco in a worse light as he was warned about this, and was so obssed with making it a suprise party because that’s how his plan went, he refused to just.. talk to her about it. Hell he could’ve just casually asked “Why do you never celebrate your birthday on your birthday”. It’s an easy question, dosen’t give the game away and allows him to gage if this is a good idea or not BEFORE baking a cake , hiring a band and getting a chocolate fountain. Instead he just went ahead with it.  And he did so.. because this ISN’T about making Star happy. This is abotu HIM making star happy. Him showing her how thoughtful, and considerate and sweet he is and how he’s always been there for her and how maybe she should be with him instead of Tom. I mean it just comes off that way.. he made it a suprise party because in his head that’s how it worked and she was super impresed and left tom that day to be with him in some elaborate fantasy. Granted the episode dosen’t say this.. but it sure as hell acccidently implies hte hell out of it by having marco act like a selfish ass who refuses to take what STAR wants into consideration, and just wants to get his fantasy back on track. What supports this to me is how he treats tom, you know one of his best friends: He, again, accuses him of forgetting.. then calls him a bad boyfriend.. a bad boyfriend for NOT wanting to force a celebration on his girlfriend she does not want, and for not forcing it on her. For you know GROWING AS A PERSON.  Beacuse here’s the pickle pumpernickle: This thing Marco’s doing? Is exactly the kind of thing a pre-character development TOM did, that was rightfully framed as bad. Being controlling, wanting things to go JUST a certain way instead of letting them flow naturally, not getting the hint star isn’t intrested, and not caring about what she wants and only what you want. Marco is doing the same thing Tom used to do. And for starters i’ts already bad because you know MARCO WAS THE ONE WHO FINALLY GOT IT THROUGH TO TOM THAT THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR WAS TOXIC AND SELFISH. But apparently when it’s Marco himself doing it it’s fine. If there was ever any clear evidence Marco regressed as a character, there it is.  Him actively unelarning a lesson he taught someone else and then getting combative when that person rightly tries to call him out. Marco is just insufferable in this episode: He’s being selfish, creepy and posseive and he’s apparenlty supposed to, at least on some level BE RIGHT.  But.. we will get to that. Consider a pin put in this rant. 

So Tom overreacts, and throws some fire at marco, which is genuinely wrong and Kelly’s right to call him out, and then headlocks him asking marco to say he’s a good boyfriend. Marco screams out ‘NEVVVEEEERRRR”

I just made this, by hapinstance, while watching the video I put up there. I.. I did not think i’d get to use this so soon but my god. Just my god that’s a terrible thing to say.  So the party soon breaks down elsewhere as Kelly is mad at tom for.. understandable reasons again the guy she has a crush on was just nearly set on fire, even if i’m still on Tom’s side overall here, it’s still not right. Janna points out it’s probably because she has a crush on marco, which while acurate dosen’t mean she was wrong and Tad pops out to be upset about that. Even though you know you two are broken up and as Kelly points out he needs to move out. Pony is mad she’s not getting any attention and Starfan is mad because star’s mad. Star results to desperate measures, opening the windows to try and repeate the act of the settlers.  She didn’t however count on the Janna factor as she throws the stump in the fire, which is in chracter. What’s not, and again I give Jess full credit for this one, is that everyone just starts.. warming around the stump and not caring like a bunch of jackasses not caring about their close friend, and in tom’s case, girlfriend’s feelings. Also tom and marco apparently stopped fighting just to be this stupid. 

But naturally burning the symbolic stump is a bad idea and the real one attacks. Protip: If you live in a world of magical nonsense, maybe don’t discount the magic stump. Everyone’s captured, including moon and river, with River also being suprised and replying to Star’s annoyance at him not beliving with “Sweetie it’s a stump!”. Alan Tudyk is a god and I feel you all should acknowleddge that. But yeah everything seemsm to be bad but everyone apologizes, if not for the right things in Marco’s case, and Tom says “I’m sorry i’m a bad boyfriend!”. You .. you aren’t. You did nothing wrong. I feel like this is tom for the last agrivating 6 minutes of the episode

He did SOME THINGS wrong but he is NOT a bad boyfriend. He is throughtful, kind and while he has flaws, SO DOES STAR. He is not a bad boyfriend for not wanting to repeat past abusive actions! GAH. Let’s just get on with it. They all hold hands, they thiunk this is what made the stump go away but Star is sure it was just going to kill them, Moon and River have a thousand yard stare as they realize they both have to get repairs for this room now and do an extra big stump day next year to make sure it dosen’t come back. And Marco apologizes to star.. for not beliving her. Not for forcing this on her, not for causing all of this, not at all to tom, but for not beliving her while star FUCKING APOLOGIZES TO HIM.  Pin removed, bullshit falling to the floor... Trunks if you would. 

Thank you. Star DID NOTHING WRONG. Tom DID LESS WRONG THAN MARCO. WHY ARE THEY APOLOGIZING. Why is this little shithead getting everything he wants as the party happens after all, if a day later, and he gets to dance with star, while everyone else is painted as being in the wrong? That’s what makes this special so putrid: that MARCO is apparently in the right for doing the same , if on a smaller scale, manipulative shit tom used to do before he grew as a person, yet the episode sides with him, props him up and teases Starco. If it’s Starco it’s okay apparently and that’s.. not okay. You can’t .. build a ship on a character acting like a jackass. That’s not how this works. Marco was wrong, he was bad and he should FEEL bad. Instead he’s just a creepy jerk this entire episode, being entitled, manipulating star, screaming at tom.. and gets REWARDED FOR IT. Fuck this episode. 

Ademar been visited by the stump about 2 - 3 times in his life and miraculously he survived each time (barely though)

Two happened when He was still married with Genevieve. They got into a heated argument/disagreement on Stump Day late at night that alsmost ended badly for both of them

The first time was more of, they forgot to take incount of The Stump

The second time, Genevieve purposefully tried to awaken The Stump, hopeing it would get rid of Ademar (almost did but then it struck 12)

Third Time Ademar completely forgot it was Stump Day and didn’t take his actions and temperment into account  v

Star in her bunny pjs