(((Digimon Is Forever)))

We give Japanese cartoons a hard time for recycling the same episode premises in every show, but if you think about it, not only do North American cartoons do the same thing, our stock episode premises are weird as hell.

Like:

Japanese cartoons have beach episodes.

American cartoons have that episode where the protagonist accidentally creates a whole bunch of duplicates of himself, all of whom later die horribly, with the last one standing giving the protagonist some valuable bit of life advice just before expiring.

Japanese cartoons have tournament episodes.

American cartoons have that episode where the focus character misuses time travel and accidentally erases herself, then goes on a tour of a world where she never existed and discovers that everything is terrible, because apparently her presence was literally the only thing holding back the Apocalypse.

Some Japanese cartoons have that episode where they parody Alice in Wonderland

American cartoons have that incredibly weird trope where something inside of them that shouldn’t be there, so their friends shrink down and go into their body to get it out and inevitably get attacked by the immune system

Also the freaky Friday mindswap for America.

America also has The Competition featuring the Undefeated Champion who, if he has not cheated his way to victory thusfar, will Turn to Cheating in the second or third act to stop the hero from winning The Competition, and is usually a huge trash-talking jerk that Everyone Loves. 

Okay but like the American premises are usually just parodies of various movies.

Premise 2 is It’s A Wonderful Life, Premise 3 is Fantastic Voyage, you literally namedropped Freaky Friday, and then Premise 4 is 75% of sports movies.

Reminder: you’re not always going to like decisions authors make with their characters and stories

And that doesn’t make the work automatically Problematic™

i’m constantly baffled by how averse tumblr is to conflict as a means to drive narrative. like. people in fandom seem to legitimately wants stories to adhere to 90s-sitcom-levels of “nothing significantly affects the initial status quo” regardless of whether this fits the narrative or not, and then get PERSONALLY offended when this (inevitably) ends up never happening.

like characters fighting and disagreeing and even straight up disliking each other is not bad writing. messy personal conflicts where no part is really 100% right are not bad writing. like… yeah in the realm of fanfiction there’s nothing cooler than reading 4773736478382 stories about the characters watching movies or playing board games and being nice and sweet with each other, but in actual media stuff neeeds to switch it up every now and then. stories aren’t meant to be static.

also: just because the way a narrative develops is upsetting/frustrating to YOU, doesn’t means it’s bad writing. sometimes being upsetting/frustrating is precisely the point.

I think there comes a point where you’ve got to acknowledge that the substance of your criticism doesn’t lie in any particular problem with a show’s writing, but in a fundamental disagreement with the show’s creators about which character should have been the protagonist, and that nothing would have satisfied you short of a completely different show from the one that was actually made.

i’m constantly baffled by how averse tumblr is to conflict as a means to drive narrative. like. people in fandom seem to legitimately wants stories to adhere to 90s-sitcom-levels of “nothing significantly affects the initial status quo” regardless of whether this fits the narrative or not, and then get PERSONALLY offended when this (inevitably) ends up never happening.

like characters fighting and disagreeing and even straight up disliking each other is not bad writing. messy personal conflicts where no part is really 100% right are not bad writing. like… yeah in the realm of fanfiction there’s nothing cooler than reading 4773736478382 stories about the characters watching movies or playing board games and being nice and sweet with each other, but in actual media stuff neeeds to switch it up every now and then. stories aren’t meant to be static.

also: just because the way a narrative develops is upsetting/frustrating to YOU, doesn’t means it’s bad writing. sometimes being upsetting/frustrating is precisely the point.

there’s a difference between bad writing and you just not getting your way, friend