Some rambling about itsfunneh's YHS and Kyran's and Alec's friendship
Just finished watching the 1st season of YHS!
It's.... KIND OF A MESS? Once again the plot is everywhere and they're not very good at pacing.
Slightly unrelated to the plot; what bothered me the most was the outdated gender roles being pushed on every time.
--"You punch like a girl." (not the extra misogynistic flavour in this quote) "I'm going to roast marshmallows.. LIKE A MAN!"
There's also another episode where they're looking to buy a present for senpai and Kyran said that Gold shouldn't buy perfume for the former because HE'S NOT HER BOYFRIEND?? ANYWAYS This was 7 years ago and I'm not saying you should harass or cancel the krew for this or whatever (it's extremely pointless and it won't go anywhere). I'm just criticising it because this type of generalisation leads to stereotypes. AND THEN these stereotypes both dictate the way you behave because you're scared that people will put you down and brush you off.
ANYWAYS, I didn't mean to make a long ass paragraph about this but here we are.
Pushing aside the ordeal abt the writing pushing these gender roles, there's a paradox about that and the relationship between Kyran and Alec. It's kind of funny because there are some elements in their dynamic that could become a good conflict between them and it could also say a lot of things about how society works and how words have a lot of power.
- Kyran is your shy reserved weeaboo who's often played as the comedic relief because of his tendencies to just suck at physical activities (me asf)
- Alec is the shady hardworking stereotypical bad boy. He's a murderer's henchman solely because he needs money to support his family.
There is a lot of potential to talk about what boys (and equally girls) have to endure in society and how it can be dealt with.
HEADCANON STUFF HERR!! But if you tweak some stuff, Kyran has the archetype of the guy labelled as "too feminine" because he's not athletic and actually voices out his emotions. But evidently he doesn't want to be seen as feminine because it has negative connotations; when he says "I'm going to roast marshmallows.. LIKE A MAN!" it LITERALLY sounds like he has a fragile masculinity because... society. And I'm not blaming it at all haha... I feel like we've all experienced a slice of this.
Conversely, there's Alec who actually fits into the masc category; he's effortlessly athletic and doesn't feel... much I guess. He doesn't really voice out his emotions like AT ALL but he is put down often because he's kind of seen as a delinquent by most people.
So there's this whole thing between the fear of being called feminine as a masculine individual and being feared by most people simply because of the way you dress/act.
I think that's already a really strong foundation for what will ensue next.
So in season 2 we get to know how they first met in kindergarten.
Kyran was getting bullied by some random dude. But Alec just beats the crap out of that person (which he refers alec as the "MEAN BOY", once again supporting my stuff with Alec being seen as a bad person. But thats just my interpretation of it, like there are so many and tbh u would call anyone mean for punching you if you rhink youre right ig). To me it just kind of makes their friendship a little more complex!
1. it shows that Alec genuinely doesn't give a fuck about who Kyran is as a person because regardless of who he is, that kid was doing something wrong. Alec is a decent person for standing up for someone who couldn't do anything against what was happening at the moment. I know they were like 5 but it shows that in nature Alec instinctively does things for what he believes is right (and it's not the only example of Alec doing something nice).
2. To me it says a lot about how children just don't care about who they're playing with based on physical attributes or whatever UNTIL society makes them learn that it DOES matter.
And these facts are so bittersweet to me because in the camping episode of season 1, they just voice out each other's insecurities. It's not even funny anymore LMAO.
"you're a delinquent!" + Alec poking "fun" at Kyran for being childish/not-a-man-TM, but you could interpret him as just asking these questions out of curiosity. He's actually less confrontational than Kyran in the episode.
Despite knowing that they used to look out for each other and accepted each others' QUOTE AND QUOTE """""" flaws""", whatever outbreak happened between these two must have caused a huge impact on each other's perception of each other. An impact that made them internally say "people must've been right. Alec IS a bad person after all. Kyran IS too emotional."
There's another layer of salt to the wounds because deep down Alec probably also agrees with Kyran for being a delinquent because he's Yandere's henchman.
Some suggestions that could've made this story a bit more engaging and interesting, at least for me:
- making alec hate horror + gore would make more sense to me because his side job is to literally cover up someone's death and all of that.
- we get 0 reasons as to why Alec likes Funneh. I feel like they could've played on the fact that Alec didn't make any friends after Kyran and has always been viewed as the bad guy. But then Funneh just doesn't care about that prejudice and hangs out with him anyway?
- the 2 plots (funneh's life + yandere's killing spree) should've been a bit more intertwined. Murder cases in high school aren't peanuts. I feel like it could've been fun seeing Kyran dragging Gold and Funneh into this whole detective thing meanwhile Alec is reluctantly coming with them and having some inner conflicts. Actually, they should've fleshed out their reasons as to why they're doing this whole detective thing in the first place. There needs to be a huge drawing force as to why, yk? Maybe drawing some inspiration to Heathers and Be More Chill could've been fun too!
- Despite them being in America, I feel like we should've seen more people of colour? Like african descent americans. Their thing literally takes place in THE USA yet most of them are like... white or asian or mixed