We all know about Coltland Twins AU... but what about... KENland Twins AU
C'mon imagine precious himbo Ken being so very proud of his VERY SMART BROTHER!
Wow! He's a scientist! Wow he's a teacher! Woah!!! He's helping to save the world? That's super radical of him! Epic. Awesome. So glad - makes it easier to do Beach. Hard to do Beach if the sun is cold right? Those astro-faces are a bummer. :(
I mean... Ryland loves the Beach.... Ken's JOB is Beach... so maybe it's... a twin thing...?
Ken drops in on Ryland teaching - the kids love him ofc.
Imagine him sitting in one of the small chairs in the class and holding his hand up with equal exuberance to answer questions that Ryland asks.
Imagine Ken somehow continuing to check in on his bro at work even when he's on the task fork and manages to DROP IN on the AIR CRAFT CARRIER to be there for Grace (no - I don't know how. No... nobody else does either. Yes - Stratt has tried to find out. No - she can't seem to get rid of him)
He's this sparkly bubbly neon-wearing himbo of a man that IS SO PROUD OF HIS BROTHER OH-EM-GEE.
Could have the potential to be depressing as hell when Ryland is shot into space.
Or... HILARIOUS if Ken somehow manages to get himself shot into space (If my bro goes - I go!).
Rocky: ... Why is this human so... bright, question?
Grace: I thought you couldn't see colour.
Rocky: Rocky cannot see... but can... feel the brightness.
Ken: ✨✨✨ :D ✨✨✨
(Also.. c'mon... KENland? Barbieland? IT'S MEAN TO BE Lol)
Thanks for coming to my Ken Talk.
ryland grace is like the most interesting guy ever to me
like hes so so kind but also so so far up his own ass. he picks fights. he talks over people and doesnt like being interrupted. he likes making others laugh. he likes kids. he simultaneously takes things too seriously and doesnt take them seriously enough. he'll yell and throw shit but tuck his tail between his legs and run the second his ego is threatened. he only sleeps when he starts getting stupid from sleep depravation. his fear of intimacy makes him easily annoyed with other people, but it also makes him not want to worry anyone. he doesnt swear but only out of habit. he's scared of most things but was adventerous in college. he is a coward and also the hero
ok so it's no surprise at this point that i've been seriously disappointed in the direction that uu s3's plot has been going. like it's kind of insane how hard the protags dropped the ball after the conclusion of s2. and after discussion with @miiicrobat i think our main issues with s3 boil down to a couple points: (i) there's a SERIOUS lack of cohesion in the plot/between episodes, (ii) the main driving force behind 3/4 POVs (not spoke) is pretty weak/poorly explained, (iii) a lot of plot threads from s1/s2 have been dropped entirely, and (iv) there's a serious overuse of npcs/faceless army members/"staged" moments to give the protags aura which like. is not doing it for me.
it feels like at the end of s2, they were pretty clearly setting up for parrot being a "bad king" and ruining the server. there was a LOT of evidence towards this happening, esp. in the final episodes of s2 with parrot not knowing what he wanted to do as king & the evil vizier spoke whispering in his ear & so weirdly-strongly supporting his run for king. there was So Clearly something happening with wemmbu/flame's parallels -- they were both trying to become the "strongest player" even though their deutags were pulling them towards more peaceful ends. and of course there was whatever happening with mapicc's disappearance/jamatop that was clearly going to come back and haunt spoke. like there was SOME kind of setup for the s3 plot.
in a way, they've fulfilled those expectations: there's the conflict/resource scarcity between the old players/new players, jamatop coming back in a big way with purgatory, spoke/parrot being seen as public enemies while imperial fire is teaming up with arachn1d/cindercrest against parrot. the problem is that they did it in SUCH a supremely unsatisfying/unconvincing way because like. basically every character's motivations have been twisted in such weird ways to Get To That Point. like ok:
why is lomedy "all i want is for flame to stop fighting" the one who encouraged flame to join cindercrest. even if he's saying "it'll be so peaceful on the server afterwards" it doesn't make any sense with his motivations in s2: to STOP flame from fighting EVEN THOUGH there was the war against law happening at the same time.
why is theo being flattened out into a sidekick for parrot that doesn't have the same moral compass/backbone he had in the farlands (or even in early s2 when he was standing up against the stupider shit parrot did). how is theobald "survivalist #1" okay with putting himself in such crazy danger when he abandoned parrot in the invis mafia arc so quickly because he knew what parrot was doing was suicidal and stupid
why is jumper "i hate spoke" who saying shit like "spoke's not actually done anything wrong from what i've seen" & following him around blindly when she spent 99% of her screentime in s2 being like "i hate spoke" and questioning everything spoke did.
WHY IS ARACHN1D "I AM AN NPC WITH A VOICECHANGER" THE ONE MANIPULATING WEMMBU. actually i don't have any issues with egg i love egg
in the vein of that last point: basically, all of s3 feels super "staged" and set up in a way that s1/s2 really doesn't. things are happening because the writers want it to happen and the use of extra players/npcs very clearly acting out scripted lines just amplifies that. i mentioned it in a prior post but the fact that these eps are only 40-50min usually gives audiences a LOT less screentime to get attached to certain characters, so putting in VERY OBVIOUS npcs like fucking. outlawandrew and arachn1d/characters who use voicechangers, who are VERY OBVIOUSLY reading lines off a script, just doesn't work in terms of "getting the audience to actually care about what's going on" -- particularly when laid on top of a contrived & messy plot. the very-clearly staged battles with random npcs just don't have aura. i'm sorry. like i'd rather have a s1 pvp scene with 5-10 CCs chasing wemmbu around where all of them are bantering to each other or yelling at each other than a huge staged fight with like 500+ people it just doesn't work.
i mentioned this in another post, but putting in CCs that the audience ALREADY cares about/have heard of serves as a virtual fix-it to this problem because the audience has a mock connection with those CCs already. but they're not doing that either to fix the problem!!! it sucks because there seem to be SO MANY CCs (notably a lot of women/queer CCs. not saying anything but.) that COULD'VE played the roles of these scripted NPCs that've just been dropped from the plot entirely. like why did we swap out loppezz for deputyace and sarge_law when loppezz has been here since s1 and has an existing connection with most of the protags from s1. zam disappeared entirely after having her conflict with wemmbu smoothed out at the end of s2 -- she could've so easily been a member of parrot's kingdom (sirpig?? danchogold??? etc.). why wasn't boosfer outlawandrew, why wasn't reddoons danchogold, where is wato/ken/d9lphin, etc etc etc. how did they have the budget to pay for saparata's time but not anyone else's LIKE...
i understand that filming the episodes takes time/it's "easier" to use npcs and read over their lines but like. purely plot- & character-wise. it really sucks to have all of these otherwise-unused characters disappear without any warning or explanation and just feel like they've been "forgotten" about.
and you figure that BECAUSE the plot is more scripted, the plot would get cleaner/more streamlined -- but they're still spending a lot of episodes introducing enemies and going on sidequests/diversions that don't really have any larger impact on what the ultimate plot is. the first thing that comes to mind is the two-episode mist diversion flame went on (because what did that have to do with what he's doing with cindercrest right now). and while i think the null/jamatop thing spoke is doing is really interesting it's like. entirely disconnected with what the other characters are doing. i get it's for spoke's isolation/character development I GET they wanted to show off more of the farlands but it feels sooooooo messy to have this entirely separate second antag doing some whatever in the nether (while clown is also apparently the ruler of the nether btw).
there's also the fact that a lot of elements of s3 are like. ACTIVELY CONTRADICTORY/the characters are doing so much voiced-over "telling over showing" that it's just nottttt convincing at all to watch... like there is literally no real "evidence" of the resource problems or conflict between old/new players anywhere other than saparata saying "my own friends were raided and KILLED by bandits because of parrot." meanwhile clownpierce is apparently the ruler of the nether and has enough resources to outfit ALL of cindercrest in full netherite... but there's no mention of ever approaching clownpierce to help deal with the influx of new players. or the fact that parrot went on that whole mission in one of the early s3 eps to feed the new players/construct farms/and so on. and yet despite all this we're Still Having "resource problems" according to lomedy. LIKE SHOW ME WHERE THE RESOURCE PROBLEMS ARE DON'T JUST TELL ME
s3 could've been a lot cleaner if it really was just parrot/spoke playing up their roles as the main antagonists/trying to mutually control parrot's kingdom & the server towards what they see as a "better" end by letting new players in. (bring back like spoke's hacking & trying to dupe items to combat the resource scarcity or something man like there was literally something there.) and jamatop/cindercrest are trying to take parrot/spoke down as a single unit, rather than as two separate antagonists (like why couldn't jamatop have played saparata's role -- they both don't want any change to come to the server). and then imperial fire are the main "protagonists" working with jamato, cindercrest, etc. because both of them have actual moral compasses (or have deutags with actual moral compasses) (or just generally hate authority and hate the fact that parrot and spoke are trying to manipulate them) pushing them to do so.
there seriously didn't need to be a sideplot with the null for mapicc & jumperwho to still betray spoke and join jamatop because that's what THEIR CHARACTERS would've done (without getting flattened out into Spoke Plot Deutags). drop the npcs like reina and outlawandrew and danchogold and just have like. fymada/4cvit/other people in parrot's kingdom actively work against parrot to the point where he feels like he has to turn against his own people/FORCE his own cities to join his army against cindercrest. AND NOT TO MENTION
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