I Hate That I Love This Show

Alex probably won't since he was actually pretty open about disliking Gabriel but I guess we'll see if Ashley also goes below the bare minimum of "not collaborating with a serial groomer"

In case anyone forgot what he did:

Tabless version:

Has anyone else noticed how weirdly racist Terraria is???? Or am I just crazy?

I've been playing the game for the first time in ages and it just keeps hitting me with thing after thing. The non-white NPCs are "stereotypical fantasy arabic guy" "black woman who's a were-animal, and also has straight hair" "black man who loves guns and shooting things" and the golfer who i'll admit i cant find much wrong with

theres the fucking WITCH DOCTOR. he sells TIKI STUFF. HIS BEASTIARY ENTRY MENTIONS VOODOO?????

...And also mostly to prove it's easy not to have racist bullshit. I do a lot of things out of spite, this will be one of them.

Edit the Zoologist's sprites to have her textured hair from the credits sequence, but with the fox ears. I'll need help with this one, as I don't think I'll be able to do it for the talksprites. (Also, make the talksprite hair the same darkness as the normal sprite hair. Like, why the fuck is it lighter?)

Edit the Arms' Dealer's dialogue to be less violent. He can still be a gun nut, but less murdery about it please.

Can we change his talksprite to have a haircut that isn't the Killmonger Cut™️ please. Again will need help with this, and it's not as necessary as the rest.

FIX THE WITCH DOCTOR HOLY SHIT. Rename him (I saw someone call him the "Lihzard Wihzard" once and I think that's cool), reskin and rename all the tiki bullshit, adjust his dialogue and his beastiary entry. I think I want to lean more into the nonhuman aspect of everything, that would be fun.

REMOVE THE "PYGMY" BULLSHIT??? And replace it with something more plant-themed, since you get that staff from defeating Plantera.

Remove the Dye Trader's "sleeping like a sultan" line and replace it with something else.

REMOVE THE STYLIST'S LINE WHERE SHE CALLS THE DYE TRADER EXOTIC???

Make more of the NPCs into people of color. The Painter mentions Dia de los Muertos in his Graveyard dialogue, so maybe I can make him indigenous Mexican and change his available names accordingly? Also, the Princess has a lot of Japanese name options, so I'll make her Japanese (which will probably be the easiest sprite edit, I mostly just need to change her eye color to not be blue). I also kinda wanna make the Party Girl black but that's mostly just cause she's based on Pinkie Pie and I've seen so many Pinkie Pie humanizations that make her black.

And yeah, Jax is just boiled down to a transfem edgelord who feels unworthy of love rather than discussing the darker and abusive traits of the character too…is definitely not an intentional choice.

Jax is the epitome of roleplaying with the worst person alive. They're the oc who has to constantly be upset and in need of support but never accepts it and only uses it to hurt others, everyone has to forgive them immediately when they hurt others, everyone has to be attracted to them, everyone else's problems get solved immediately while theirs drags on and on, they constantly need to be walked back off the cliff and yet, still in the end, they make their oc have a big dramatic suicide scene and everyone else has to give them a big elaborate funeral and the person they kept targeting isn't allowed to be sad anymore. Literally the " well I guess everyone would be happier if I just DIED!" and everyone around them is so fucking tired of this bullshit they just say yes. Then the group chat rp partners all leave and make their characters have happy, fun and spicy adventures without the fucking angsty energy vampire in the corner.

Ohh my god. (Sorry the image is ginormous…)

“I always forget that you (Michael) say that you actually don’t do that much improv, which is crazy to me because like half of my lines are improv.” -Amanda

Sooo you’re telling me that goose fucking did the bare minimum while writing Ragatha, and that the VOICE ACTOR, not THE WRITER OF THE SHOW, actually adds on to the blank slate that is a character???? Amanda said it themselves, (after what I put in quotes above) and I’m paraphrasing here, that they did what was written in the script, and was like “hey she could use a little extra” FOR ALMOST HALF OF THE LINES IN THE FINAL SHOW. Tell me you don’t know how to write*, without telling me you don’t know how to write*.

*a character (in this case, but at the same time, goose can’t write cohesively for shit 💀)

But I wanted to mention/address a few things to sort of set up the review so it doesn’t bog down the actual post and go on rather unnecessary tangents. Giving context for a few things I’m planning on saying.

The first one I want to mention is one I’ve been thinking of since the end of Murder Drones, which I’ve also seen; though I joined that series after Episode 6. And it’s a concern/thought I’ve had about the independent animation since coming onto the scene. I’m not sure if it applies only to Glitch Productions as those are the only ones I’ve seen to completion, or if it applies to anything indie.

It’s the concern of the series not getting proper pre-production critique and editing.

Let me explain.

I’m no expert on how production of a film or television series works, but I do know some of the basics. When a studio has a new idea for a story, they spend time refining it to make it the best it can be. Storyboarding and meetings to make sure the story flows coherently and has a strong direction. I remember seeing a post about how whenever Guillermo del Toro makes a new film he has it viewed by a select group of other film friends to give critique and pointers. In the post it said with one of his films (I don’t remember which one, sorry) they said a scene was beautiful but ultimately unnecessary for the integrity of the film and story. Ultimately similar to a “kill your darlings” idea.

While, especially more recently, some of the creativity and continuity of a story is compromised due to corporate interference, it’s still the general goal to make it work as well as it can. And while I’m sure in the indie scene they have a similar goal, I do wonder how much of that is emphasized and expected. Depending on how and who is working on the production, the team for an indie production is small, and potentially biased. In specific to Glitch and their works, I know their goal was to give a chance for the creator to do whatever they want without corporate interference. And while that’s great I wonder how much of that ideal is taken too far. So much so no one is saying, “hey, maybe we can do this so the story is a lot more consistent and there aren’t any gapping plot holes?”

Like, with Murder Drones, there was a lot of potential. And I know one of the main points was to analyze the story and find lore elements to make it more intriguing. But some of the basic story functions and beats are just… straight up ignored or abandoned and not followed through. The entire pilot and what it established was pretty much retconned when Episode 2 dropped. I saw part of a live stream with some die-hard fans rewatching the series and even they were complaining or at least pointing out the inconsistencies. Saying things like, “Remember how the murder/disassembly drones have to drink worker drone oil so they don’t overheat and die? Yeah we never see that again.”

I know with Murder Drones it was implied some things changed after the pilot and they had to make in universe changes to make it go in the new direction, but The Amazing Digital Circus, at least what was implied in an interview after episode 2, was thought out and planned to be consistent. But, after seeing the finale twice, I’m wondering if something happened behind the scenes, or Gooseworx was given too much free reign without any gentle but necessary criticism to make the story go from good to great.

Especially with the finale it felt like they ignored some points and lore made earlier and never addressed again, and/or they had a lot of cool ideas they wanted to implement but it made the whole thing seem disjointed and a bit unsatisfactory.

I'm glad people are finally realizing that the issues in this show are foundational and not just as a result of the number of episodes. The amount of people writing off the issues with this show as being only related to length is driving me crazy.

Would more episodes have helped? Maybe. But Everyone working on this show knew how long it would be. They had every opportunity to tell an 8 episode story (which it was going to be, yet still ballooned into what is effectively 11 episodes when you consider the length of the finale) and yet they just...failed.

ah, right. not empathizing with an abuser is "failing an empathy test". yea, no that makes sense.

yea, sure, pomni is the most empathetic. not ragatha. the one who instantly tries to make pomni feel better when she joins the circus and has a panic attack. the one who tried to comfort jax after ribbit abstracted. the one who wants to do as much as she can for everyone else, even if it winds up with her getting hurt. why would it be ragatha.

pomni clearly cares about her friends that jax hurts. why else would she continue to let jax harass and abuse them. pomni, the one who told ragatha to be mean and then gotupset when ragatha was even slightly mean. the one who practically shuns ragatha because she's trying to be nice. ah yes, how did i not see that it was pomni who was the most empathetic all along