The guy who writes stuff

[mrros-e]

heyooo, finally, an introductory post

they/them, he/him if you wish to call me king or something

political parties? the NY Mets and NY Islanders and KNICKS IN 4 KNICKS IN 4 KNICKS I 4---

nah but seriously, im a musician and a firearms instructor and queer. which is confusing to most, I admit. at least im entertaining!

things im proud of (go look at them!):

my yt Mister Rose, slugterra edits mostly with a dash of EPIC the Musical

my ao3 Mister Rose, Slugterra fics mostly with a dash of EPIC the Musical (and Rick Riordan threatens to show up too)

the Hottest Slugterra Character Tournament here on tumblr, its all catalogged here:

Post by @mrros-e

💬 0  🔁 2  ❤️ 9 · MASTER POST: HOTTEST SLUGTERRA CHARACTER TOURNAMENT · Hello! So yes, I am doing a Hottest Slugterra Character Tournament. I

[faceless-muses]

SLUGTERRA MOM RANT

Slugterra is very much a story about fathers, like I mean this in the literally sense I think until the very end, only one mother actually appears, which is something I am most impressed with this show I have gotta admit

If someone has an tragic backstory, if parents are a primary focus in any way, it will deal with a father of some sort, without fail, and no mother will be mentioned in any form.

Twist father was murdered

Dana's father was killed

Blakk's father left him to be enslaved (granted given to this is Blakk I'm pretty sure she died from child birth)

and the very thing that drives the part outside of unhinged capitalism, what happened to Eli's father

and if I was a better meta poster, I would go in the inherent misogyny of this show, where fathers are the most important thing to the character while the mothers are erased from the light entirely.

But I am not that good with meta, so that's not the point of this post

The point of this post is about the two characters that are brought to light by the Out of the Shadows final, two very important characters while still being essentially non-entities

Eli and Tad's Mothers

Like, the moment, the very moment, their concepts are introduced, who Eli and Tad are immediately re-contextualized, with the way they act and other details about them into something very different

Eli's mother being gone completely from his life while its clear that other Shane's stepped up to raise him, with so many implications and questions, did she have a break down and left, was she not fit to raise him, was the abandonment even willing? Or was she iced out of the Shane Clan the moment it became clear her husband wasn't coming home and isolated from Eli so she doesn't take him with her and leave Slugterra without a champion?

None of this explained, but the important thing is the impact of her absence on Eli, when we meet him he's so indoctrinated into the Shane Traditions and the glorification/romanization of his father and the position of being a Shane itself, he sounds like he's trying to be his fathers mini-me

Will is a good man but a good man who has done bad things to others because of misjudgements of he makes of the situation he's in and what the position of being a Shane demands, and it has to be spelled out to Eli by the people who are still suffering from choices Will made (Twist and Dana) that his father has done bad things and hurt others, even though logically that is the most realistic outcome from being the sole person in the only authority position 90% of the underground population has, you are going to hurt people who don't deserve it to keep control.

But. Eli doesn't have anyone outside of the bubble of the Shane's in the surface, with his mother not around, an outsider of the clan that could've been very good insight on what the position very much entails and what his father is expected to do, Eli just has an echo chamber of people who have been in the position and have very good reasons for their actions if they were harmful (because everyone got them) that Eli has high thoughts and expectations that get brutally destroyed when he was faced with the reality outside of the echo chamber he was in.

he leans towards his father being a saint because he didn't have his mother that could have given him a more nuanced view of what his father did and was, and that lack of view from his mother leaves him unprepared for Slugterra in the more nitty gritty personal side of genuine people conflict where it's not just people with guns who are doing whatever the fuck they want because fuck it, this is emotional conflict his family has caused and now Eli is having to get cut while trying to pick up the pieces.

Tad's mother is a bit more subtle, as she's never directly alluded to via the plot or characters, outside of it being clear she and Tad are not close to one another, but her existence is hard to ignore when you start looking for traces of her in Tad. First thing is Tad's scent, Pronto is immediately suspicious of him, which is later revealed that Pronto was scenting Thaddius' scent on him, but it would be logical to consider the reason as to why Tad wasn't immediately clocked to being Thaddius' son is that it's clear the his mothers scent is what's blocking Pronto from clocking it until its pointed out to him.

The other big thing that's there's thing thing about Tad, is that he's an inventor, just like his father, but where the split is that Tad has an almost elegant way towards his creating, his gliders. That's a split from Thaddius' creating, creating weapons that's destructive as all hell, the gliders are unique in that they're not destructive and aren't meant for the use of much outside of exploring/settling curiosity (Tad heading down to slugterra), you get the feeling that this is something that Tad's mother encouraged in a way. The fact this is the first and last creation Tad makes completely on his own shown to us, while everything he brings out is just things Blakk's created that Tad is reusing, his creativity is completely stifled because he is trying so hard to be like his father that things that he created get tossed to the wayside until it is extremely needed

It's such a interesting thing with how this mirrors with Eli and Tad, they're intent with this connection on living up/past their own fathers, while aspects of their mothers are pushed away, they are stifled in some way because of the centering they are doing towards the fathers and must struggle because of it.

What is there to take away from all of this? The moment that this show decided to think about mothers for even a second everything becomes 10xs more interesting and of course they only introduce it at the very fucking end of this show so they never explore a damn thing

[soulfully1]

This, YES.

For what it's worth, I think it wasn't done in bad faith. It was surely easier as show writers to focus on the one parent of the main character around whom the story revolves, considering that they already had tons of worldbuilding to do. Epecially since the viewers were teenagers or younger who, chances are, weren't yet interested in subtler, more socially engaging themes such as misoginy, privilege, compromise and more advanced ethics.

Plus, many of us happen to be female, but it's very likely that a show where you shoot (at) stuff and the main character is male, was aimed mainly at males. In that sense, a younger viewer might resonate more with a higher number of male characters.

Also, is there a chance that something good is actually happening for once in the world and we as a society are, even subconsciously, more inclusive than the early 2010s to women, when it comes to "simpler" media too? One could argue that mothers were introduced at the very end because times were ever so slightly changing, but don't mind my momentarily irrational faith in society.

All that being said, MORE LORE PLEASE showrunners. I agree with you, we basically got half-families for every character involved (not that it is an inherently bad thing of course, it just comes across as simplistic yk?). Not to mention that the only character whose family isn't even mentioned once is Trixie, the only female main character, and don't get me started on the total lack of background they gave her.

The other side of it though is that the Slugterra universe doesn't really seem to be that mysogynistic when you overlook the fact that the main backstory-characters are male. Gender distinctions do seem to be irrelevant when it comes to slugball; there are countless women-slingers; apparently they can aspire to be movie directors without being seen as a joke which is more than can be said for today's reality, save for a few exceptions. Plus, we also saw some women take leadership roles, like the leader of the resistence or as you said Shanai, iconic in herself.

Honestly imo, as usual with Slugterra, it probably isn't that deep in the showrunners' minds, despite us wishing for more depth

[faceless-muses]

hi hello thanks for the reblog!

So, when I say that Slugterra is misogynistic, its not that I'm calling the the screen writers and the universe itself are like anti women, but that misogyny is inherently baked into society and the runners biases, yes I don't think that the show runners were thinking that into it, but that doesn't mean much other than this bias runs that deep that they can just not choose throwing a mention of a mother like twist and dana's stories do not change if you swap out their fathers for their mothers, like literally nothing, so that does bring in the context that the showrunners were more prioritizing of men

Epecially since the viewers were are teenagers or younger who, chances are, aren't yet interested in subtler, more socially engaging themes such as misoginy, privilege, compromise and more advanced ethics.

Honestly, I mean this in very good faith and kindly, I don't really get why you put this in there, because I wasn't saying anything about how they should bring those topics up, this is a silly lil pokemon ripoff show where the whole premise is based off a pun about slugs and slugs, I don't expect any of that I just think they should have thrown in more female characters and that there was a bias in centering men in this show, so this is a bit out of place in what I'm trying to talk about

Trixie's family is actually talked about once in the pilots, that's about it though sjhsjkfhsdjf

Honestly out of the shadows did come out in 2016 so I think your idea of things progressing does have some merit of things getting a little better!

[mrros-e]

oooo can i jump in and say something actually

i like what Soul mentions here, cause i dont find slugterra to be a silly show at all. yeah sure it looks like it at first glace, but when you boil the show down, its pretty damn adult-like in content. The show is clearly and consistently condemning colonialism, animal abuse, enviormental harm, and the general horrors of capitalism, every single episode. Its a deeply political show that tries not to seem like that at first glance in order to hook a viewer of any age in. And this messaging is blunt at times; it doesnt often engage in subtler misogony on the surface; most of it hums in the background, like the ethics behind Twist's motivations, or the history of he Shanes and the Yangs. In a conversation about misogyny, this treatment is fair to take note of, in my opinion.

Slugterra built a world where this stuff IS important, and Soul is (from what i gather) saying that this wasn't just a by-product of the writers being silly in a kids show, the writers had a genuine direction with the messaging and they constructed their messaging to focus on some social causes more than others. Particularly those that would be understood by a teenage boy audience - dont kill the planet, be kind to all life, stand up for your friends, allies are complicated, people are complicated, someone has to stand up for the world no matter how powerful the bad guys are, you can be a hero even if you're starting extremely disadvantaged. It comes across as a very progressive show because of this, especially for a show for Disney XD, which is why I and many of us give the writers the benefit of the doubt about how woman are treated in Slugterra's narratives. I absolutely think, if we got another season, it should have (and could have!) dived more into their moms; would've been set up really well by ItS. It could have been a sign of the times, the showrunners adding more woman to the cast and to the overarching plot; woman have already been known as powerful characters, ex. Lian and Shanai and Indra and Drucilla. they SHOULD bring these woman-centered topics up, and I believe they would have if they had more time and kept writing into 2017, 2020, etc. and yes this is ANOTHER reason to hate ascension, thanks for asking!

I just see alot of ppl dismiss slugterra ALOT by going with the "its just meant as a silly show" deal, and truly, I take every excuse I can to fight that. this show is really introspective of political worldbuilding! we should treat the writers like people who had something to say, cause clearly, they did, they had alot to say. peace and love peeps, long live slugterra analysis!

[faceless-muses]

This is a fair take! I do want to clarify when I say its a silly lil show I am not trying to degrade it, I am just having my expectations of it lowered of what it will be able to present with the censors and the need to simplify some stuff in order for the pre-teen audience can have a good understanding on what is being is being told to them without being overwhelmed, that's not to say it isn't complicated and has a lot of politics enmeshed in there (hell the tidbits that the show has of Jimmo is implied to had turn a blind eye on slavery going on and Red Hook?? Kinda participating in it?? fucking unhinged and shows that even allies have allowed a corrupt system to run even if they are now helping end a new one)! It certainly does, but my expectations for how they present it is gonna be lower than say if it was a teen or adult rated media,

an example I would expect a teen or adult rated show to go into detail of what slavery would entail, the brutality and dehumanization of it, but Slugterra dances around the topic (the only time they actually show slavery instead of just mentioning it was just a short clip of when child!Thaddius was thrown into the mines in the flash back and then just kinda stayed in the back ground for the rest of the flashback), because that would require tact and an older audience that wouldn't be overwhelmed by it, and I don't really expect this show to go into direct detail about this topic

(honestly if the rating was any higher Viggo Dare would not have survived his dual with Thaddius, he would have been torn apart by a Thresher)

I don't think that the show writers were being malicious when they didn't put a lot of woman in the show, they probably didn't think about it too much about what they were doing, but that's the problem, the fact they didn't stop to think about how they were writing the story which result in

Like for another example of the flaws in Slugterra, the show is racist/colorist, like there isn't a lot of darker skin characters in the show that appear, and the recurring characters that are brown/black are Dana and Mr Saturday, both are voiced by white people and are two criminals, a thief and honestly I'm pretty sure we could call Saturday a terrorist with the shit he gets up to.

So they have shown that they can design non-white characters, but chose not to do it much outside of making villains/anti villains

honestly Saturday is worse because they decided to make him a damn Baron Samedi parody, even though voodoo is creole, and they decided to make him have a Jamaican accent, which is honestly weird that they took a piece of something sacred from one culture and then smashed it with a different culture that has nothing to do with because both cultures are black, like you do see the problem with how appropriative that is right?

I haven't really watched the eastern cavern seasons so I don't know how well they did with the aspects of Chinese culture they were using, but I do find it weird these aspects are first introduced by a character that isn't even human (Shanai)

(honestly part of me feels it can be argued that Blakk's design is a bit of an antisemitic caricature, but I am not that confidant in that argument to go into depth with it)

This isn't me saying that the writers don't know what they're doing, its just that they are all cishet white men and thus have the blind spots in topics of women and race, I do think they were slowly getting better at what they were doing as time went on by 2016, what I am saying is that while the show runners most definitely weren't being consciously malicious with how they wrote women and non-white characters, the problem comes that they didn't think about it at all and still wrote the show like that, and I think its important to shove it under the rug and talk about these flaws because Slugterra ultimately pushed these aspects into everything else

[mrros-e]

Gosh dude I love this, I'm having a blast w these reposts. Thanks for your thoughts! We all really should talk about race in kids media a whole lot more, it really has an impact on kids who watch it, and it says alot about the biases of showwriters in any company, disney or NerdCorp or anywhere else. Intersecting progressivism is a must for a better world to come about, and people should talk about this a whole lot more when analyzing media; people don't because it's pretty advantageous to look past the subject for these networks, and while I'm sympathetic to nerdcorps, I'm not at all to Disney, or any critic who brushes past how marginalized characters are portrayed. Slugterra's really good at some messaging, and relies on the audience's goodwill interpretations for some others. I don't think they're ever super bad , just sometimes, they're handled not fragile enough. And could be easily fixed with more character lore; which is why I have so much headcanons about Saturday and how human society found Slugterra and whatnot. Here's a few things I thought of reading ur lovely response:

absolutely w Jimmo, but how was Redhook a part of that slavery? Ive never thought about that before, I'm very interested in what you mean by that. 

Oh Slugterra hates going into detail. But I will say that this show is impossible to follow if the viewer doesn't assume dark details about the plot. It's off-screen, but also very integral to the story to read between those lines.

I think they did think about the woman in Slugterra, though. I think they were told by Disney to have a bunch of dudes, and they tried to insert woman where they could. It's like the woman were carefully placed to be cool characters, to be honest. Trixie, a journalist and Shane gang member. Dana, a smart funny thief who gets redeemed and turns kind (unlike her boy counterpart). Indra, a badass militia leader for like 5 minutes, notably basically the only adult slugslinger who helps them in actual battle. Drucilla, a girl who inherits a man's tech empire and is now known as the smartest technician in the whole eastern caverns. Shanai, the unbeatable master who is strict but kind and remorseful. Lian, a kind teacher figure who fucks shit up when needed and guides everyone with her wisdom and expertise. And literately no woman work for Dr Blakk...cause honestly yeah I can see his workplace being full of misogyny and no one working for him. That woman and girl in It Comes By Night; she's the one who took initiative to call the Shane's, not the men on her cavern council! There should have been more, and notably, most these characters besides Trixie have roles delegated to one or 2 episodes only. But they are there. As for the voicing, I didn't even realize that, that's a bit yikes. Their likely reasoning was that they worked with a small voice crew - every actor worked on at least like 3 characters, I think - but still, ick. Thanks for pointing that out. Especially for Dana, cause I think Dana's voice actor was a guest voice.

Ah, okay, so being critical of colorism in Slugterra is valid. I've seen ppl be annoyed at the eastern caverns arc for this too. But honestly, the fandom helps a lot in this aspect. Idk how long you've hovered in online slugterra fandom activity, but I'll note this for anyone new looking at these posts; I think over half of everyone thinks Eli is Latino, or at least not white- due to his skin color looking dark in a bunch of scenes, the jokes about Eli in a sombrero and moustache, him and Will looking less white than Jim, etc...and there was a good few years where due to how Slugterra aired, the Spanish fandom was more active than the English one - that's why we tag Bajoterra pretty often. Plus, with all the implied messaging with Kord and Pronto's species and how they're treated...I watched the show not really thinking anyone but Trixie in the main cast was white. Oh, and I think I made a post a long time ago noting that it's kinda an epic move to have Blakk's skin grow lighter as he starts working with more evil people. Idk if it's colorism in the other direction or if it was or wast meant to be viewed like that, and I'm very very white and live in a hella white enviorment I don't speak with personal experience - but I liked that detail. The villains always looked more white than the main cast and I appreciated that as I watched it, especially since Blakk is also a portrayal of corporatism, which often fucks over black communities while the media and the world don't even blink at it. And I liked the whole thing of the Shane's being purely vigilantes, coming to caverns when needed only and working with the people there only till the bad guys gone. I liked the episodes when they went to new caverns and we got to see other enviorments/cultures a bit more. With tom Por, and the shadow clan being non-human, and Junjie's prominence, and Junjie's friends not being human either, and the non-human-ness of the cast, plus Eli not being white, the show felt inclusive in terms of the basic "don't treat people based on their looks" ideal. Colorism subconsciously effected the brains of the writers definitely - gosh, could we not really get more detailed backstories of them all? The vagueness makes the show prone to being analyzed in this way, especially in the Eastern Caverns, where ur not sure for a few minutes what the writers meant by some lines here and there - but so did the very clear messaging that anyone of any species can be anything they want (shown with Kord and pronto, both not following the lifestyle expected of them). I don't really know what my own point is here, just that I don't know if Slugterra did good or bad in writing their diversity, or if they wrote it in a third much more complicated way, not perfect and not bad. But I always left an episode thinking the Shane gang were the good folk and woke as fuck, and the bad guys hated animals and cavern independance and species unlike their own and woman and poor people, so I do end up liking the writers portrayal of fighting stuff like racism, even if the writing room themselves could've done a better job with expanding the characters lore. Like seriously, Dana would not be remembered like a thief if we just had an episode or 2 of her helping out the gang later on in the plot; she's far more a burned legacy of a very brave man who fought with will Shane than a criminal by the end of The Gentleman, and they could've made that point more if she came back and helped out in the finale or something. I think it's implied to be very complicated in the show, and that is something important to display in kids media - that people are complicated, cultures and races and species's and ideologies are complicated. Dana's labeling as a thief could be avoided entirely if we had any more information about her life. Charactures run on limited information, after all! If we knew Dana's true life story there wouldn't be much issue.

Specifically with Saturday - I actually liked that part of the show. I like that, when humans came down to Slugterra, their cultures mashed together. I would ABSOLUTELY agree if this story was on the surface - the accent and the outfit and characterization doesn't make sense together, he'd need a rather interesting and complicated backstory to make that character at all okay - but down there, I can see human refugees becoming Slugterran culturally, and merging the little bits of surface culture they have left. Mario owning a pizza shop but sharing shooting-sport cultural references to Annie Oakley and her Irish husband - trixie liking corn fritters - Kord thinking slingings very cool, even if cave trolls don't normally take up the sport - pronto being more interested in the wider cultures, and the old reputation of travelers and singers and map makers his people used to have, and so on. Junjie speaking mandarin, specifically for meditation/slunging, because he probably mainly speaks a Slugterran language, and knows mandarin phrases purely in relation to slinging; kinda like how everyone knows what "es tut Brutus" despite knowing no other Latin words. Like of course, after a few centuries the cultures would evolve and merge. Maybe a lot of people in Saturdays home cavern looks and talks like that. It's like how everyone thinks Eli's bilingual! Of course he has to be, with the surface and Slugterra speaking different languages, and the Shane code being a thing. If Saturday was expanded upon, it would be a lot less jarring, and I would appreciate if this cultural merging was more explicit in the show, cause without thinking about the human lore in the show, it does come off racist af. But it's complicated 😭 and we create fanon to fix what the show left behind. Why couldn't we get like 10 seconds of the show making human cultural merging explicit 😭😭😭 very sad of them, I would be a lot more fine with their minimal screen time if we just had backstory that could develop these idea in the text itself, so when Junjie descendant of Yang unironically names a slug "Yin" in ROTE I'm not actively cringing. Just give context, writers! We can forgive you more if you kncorporate the future's a tinyyyy but more!!!

Shanai is human, to our knowledge. Just one that is lowkey immortal. And this not explained at ALL! So, we shall broth groan together over that lost lore. She could be an elf but I really don't know. And I recommend the eastern caverns movies/season - I really like them but there are things that could have landed better, mostly in the same vein as Saturday - they kept the lore vague, and it would have come off a lot better if we got to explore the cultures of the East more in-depth. But I am NO expert in multi-culturalism; in fact in in a uniquely terrible position for it, I'm white and my home county I've lived in all my life is known as the most historically racially segregated suburban area in the entirety of the United States. My education was conservative as fuck till college. So while I'm yapping a lot here, I really do like your takes, it's drawing my attention to things I haven't thought of in a lot of detail before.

Oh gosh, I also don't know enough about antisemitism in media to comment about Blakk. When I watched Back to Blakk I kinda thought he was biracial, and it stuck with me. But mostly, it was his family's cycle of abuse and the idea that pain rules the world - surviving pain is the only way to gain power and whatnot - that revolves around Blakk's character, that and the corporate power-hunger. Blakk's race's never was an important aspect of that to me personally, cause I've seen myself and my friends go through a trauma cycle like that. Any hurt human can hurt other humans, before or after a dark water trip that makes u literately whiter.

Nothing against u either! Genuinely, u seem really really cool. U know a whole lot more about a bunch of this stuff than me. This show is written by white ppl, and there are ways to still write as vague and mysterious with the world building as they wanted without sidelining the racism, speciesism, and misogyny of Slugterra as heavily as they did; and without keeping reoccurring characters who are darker and more feminine out of the overarching story. Sorry if I sounded like I was excusing it all; for one, I feel like a very inadequate judge for how colorism manifests in media, especially in situations where it seems like the writers aren't doing it on purpose (if it's obvious they are I get really mad, cause wtf are we doing at that point - If someone tells me to learn the really really popular flute arrangement of the Carman theme in my professional life one more time I will lose my shit). But yeah, I can point to the obvious shit of course but it's something I gotta work on more. I know it academically and whatever but I'm never gonna have to the personal experience to compare to the racially marginalized characters. Maybe I'll get that one day if I visit Eastern Europe and some bastard hates anyone who looks very Estonian/baltic, but I'm in America, so its not likely.

This whole thread makes me very glad for the fandom, actually. There's so many ocs that are black and Latino and Asian and woman and queer; this fandom doesn't feel cishetwhite at all and it's wonderful. I'd like to think we'll keep making content and we'll cover up the bad/inadequate stuff in canon. Y'all know I've spent years now saying I'm giving them all stories that actually focus on their backstories and complicated characterizations and opinions and the discrimination that undoubtedly exists in Slugterra. Ur really dope @faceless-muses :)

[faceless-muses]

SLUGTERRA MOM RANT

Slugterra is very much a story about fathers, like I mean this in the literally sense I think until the very end, only one mother actually appears, which is something I am most impressed with this show I have gotta admit

If someone has an tragic backstory, if parents are a primary focus in any way, it will deal with a father of some sort, without fail, and no mother will be mentioned in any form.

Twist father was murdered

Dana's father was killed

Blakk's father left him to be enslaved (granted given to this is Blakk I'm pretty sure she died from child birth)

and the very thing that drives the part outside of unhinged capitalism, what happened to Eli's father

and if I was a better meta poster, I would go in the inherent misogyny of this show, where fathers are the most important thing to the character while the mothers are erased from the light entirely.

But I am not that good with meta, so that's not the point of this post

The point of this post is about the two characters that are brought to light by the Out of the Shadows final, two very important characters while still being essentially non-entities

Eli and Tad's Mothers

Like, the moment, the very moment, their concepts are introduced, who Eli and Tad are immediately re-contextualized, with the way they act and other details about them into something very different

Eli's mother being gone completely from his life while its clear that other Shane's stepped up to raise him, with so many implications and questions, did she have a break down and left, was she not fit to raise him, was the abandonment even willing? Or was she iced out of the Shane Clan the moment it became clear her husband wasn't coming home and isolated from Eli so she doesn't take him with her and leave Slugterra without a champion?

None of this explained, but the important thing is the impact of her absence on Eli, when we meet him he's so indoctrinated into the Shane Traditions and the glorification/romanization of his father and the position of being a Shane itself, he sounds like he's trying to be his fathers mini-me

Will is a good man but a good man who has done bad things to others because of misjudgements of he makes of the situation he's in and what the position of being a Shane demands, and it has to be spelled out to Eli by the people who are still suffering from choices Will made (Twist and Dana) that his father has done bad things and hurt others, even though logically that is the most realistic outcome from being the sole person in the only authority position 90% of the underground population has, you are going to hurt people who don't deserve it to keep control.

But. Eli doesn't have anyone outside of the bubble of the Shane's in the surface, with his mother not around, an outsider of the clan that could've been very good insight on what the position very much entails and what his father is expected to do, Eli just has an echo chamber of people who have been in the position and have very good reasons for their actions if they were harmful (because everyone got them) that Eli has high thoughts and expectations that get brutally destroyed when he was faced with the reality outside of the echo chamber he was in.

he leans towards his father being a saint because he didn't have his mother that could have given him a more nuanced view of what his father did and was, and that lack of view from his mother leaves him unprepared for Slugterra in the more nitty gritty personal side of genuine people conflict where it's not just people with guns who are doing whatever the fuck they want because fuck it, this is emotional conflict his family has caused and now Eli is having to get cut while trying to pick up the pieces.

Tad's mother is a bit more subtle, as she's never directly alluded to via the plot or characters, outside of it being clear she and Tad are not close to one another, but her existence is hard to ignore when you start looking for traces of her in Tad. First thing is Tad's scent, Pronto is immediately suspicious of him, which is later revealed that Pronto was scenting Thaddius' scent on him, but it would be logical to consider the reason as to why Tad wasn't immediately clocked to being Thaddius' son is that it's clear the his mothers scent is what's blocking Pronto from clocking it until its pointed out to him.

The other big thing that's there's thing thing about Tad, is that he's an inventor, just like his father, but where the split is that Tad has an almost elegant way towards his creating, his gliders. That's a split from Thaddius' creating, creating weapons that's destructive as all hell, the gliders are unique in that they're not destructive and aren't meant for the use of much outside of exploring/settling curiosity (Tad heading down to slugterra), you get the feeling that this is something that Tad's mother encouraged in a way. The fact this is the first and last creation Tad makes completely on his own shown to us, while everything he brings out is just things Blakk's created that Tad is reusing, his creativity is completely stifled because he is trying so hard to be like his father that things that he created get tossed to the wayside until it is extremely needed

It's such a interesting thing with how this mirrors with Eli and Tad, they're intent with this connection on living up/past their own fathers, while aspects of their mothers are pushed away, they are stifled in some way because of the centering they are doing towards the fathers and must struggle because of it.

What is there to take away from all of this? The moment that this show decided to think about mothers for even a second everything becomes 10xs more interesting and of course they only introduce it at the very fucking end of this show so they never explore a damn thing

[soulfully1]

This, YES.

For what it's worth, I think it wasn't done in bad faith. It was surely easier as show writers to focus on the one parent of the main character around whom the story revolves, considering that they already had tons of worldbuilding to do. Epecially since the viewers were teenagers or younger who, chances are, weren't yet interested in subtler, more socially engaging themes such as misoginy, privilege, compromise and more advanced ethics.

Plus, many of us happen to be female, but it's very likely that a show where you shoot (at) stuff and the main character is male, was aimed mainly at males. In that sense, a younger viewer might resonate more with a higher number of male characters.

Also, is there a chance that something good is actually happening for once in the world and we as a society are, even subconsciously, more inclusive than the early 2010s to women, when it comes to "simpler" media too? One could argue that mothers were introduced at the very end because times were ever so slightly changing, but don't mind my momentarily irrational faith in society.

All that being said, MORE LORE PLEASE showrunners. I agree with you, we basically got half-families for every character involved (not that it is an inherently bad thing of course, it just comes across as simplistic yk?). Not to mention that the only character whose family isn't even mentioned once is Trixie, the only female main character, and don't get me started on the total lack of background they gave her.

The other side of it though is that the Slugterra universe doesn't really seem to be that mysogynistic when you overlook the fact that the main backstory-characters are male. Gender distinctions do seem to be irrelevant when it comes to slugball; there are countless women-slingers; apparently they can aspire to be movie directors without being seen as a joke which is more than can be said for today's reality, save for a few exceptions. Plus, we also saw some women take leadership roles, like the leader of the resistence or as you said Shanai, iconic in herself.

Honestly imo, as usual with Slugterra, it probably isn't that deep in the showrunners' minds, despite us wishing for more depth

[faceless-muses]

hi hello thanks for the reblog!

So, when I say that Slugterra is misogynistic, its not that I'm calling the the screen writers and the universe itself are like anti women, but that misogyny is inherently baked into society and the runners biases, yes I don't think that the show runners were thinking that into it, but that doesn't mean much other than this bias runs that deep that they can just not choose throwing a mention of a mother like twist and dana's stories do not change if you swap out their fathers for their mothers, like literally nothing, so that does bring in the context that the showrunners were more prioritizing of men

Epecially since the viewers were are teenagers or younger who, chances are, aren't yet interested in subtler, more socially engaging themes such as misoginy, privilege, compromise and more advanced ethics.

Honestly, I mean this in very good faith and kindly, I don't really get why you put this in there, because I wasn't saying anything about how they should bring those topics up, this is a silly lil pokemon ripoff show where the whole premise is based off a pun about slugs and slugs, I don't expect any of that I just think they should have thrown in more female characters and that there was a bias in centering men in this show, so this is a bit out of place in what I'm trying to talk about

Trixie's family is actually talked about once in the pilots, that's about it though sjhsjkfhsdjf

Honestly out of the shadows did come out in 2016 so I think your idea of things progressing does have some merit of things getting a little better!

[mrros-e]

oooo can i jump in and say something actually

i like what Soul mentions here, cause i dont find slugterra to be a silly show at all. yeah sure it looks like it at first glace, but when you boil the show down, its pretty damn adult-like in content. The show is clearly and consistently condemning colonialism, animal abuse, enviormental harm, and the general horrors of capitalism, every single episode. Its a deeply political show that tries not to seem like that at first glance in order to hook a viewer of any age in. And this messaging is blunt at times; it doesnt often engage in subtler misogony on the surface; most of it hums in the background, like the ethics behind Twist's motivations, or the history of he Shanes and the Yangs. In a conversation about misogyny, this treatment is fair to take note of, in my opinion.

Slugterra built a world where this stuff IS important, and Soul is (from what i gather) saying that this wasn't just a by-product of the writers being silly in a kids show, the writers had a genuine direction with the messaging and they constructed their messaging to focus on some social causes more than others. Particularly those that would be understood by a teenage boy audience - dont kill the planet, be kind to all life, stand up for your friends, allies are complicated, people are complicated, someone has to stand up for the world no matter how powerful the bad guys are, you can be a hero even if you're starting extremely disadvantaged. It comes across as a very progressive show because of this, especially for a show for Disney XD, which is why I and many of us give the writers the benefit of the doubt about how woman are treated in Slugterra's narratives. I absolutely think, if we got another season, it should have (and could have!) dived more into their moms; would've been set up really well by ItS. It could have been a sign of the times, the showrunners adding more woman to the cast and to the overarching plot; woman have already been known as powerful characters, ex. Lian and Shanai and Indra and Drucilla. they SHOULD bring these woman-centered topics up, and I believe they would have if they had more time and kept writing into 2017, 2020, etc. and yes this is ANOTHER reason to hate ascension, thanks for asking!

I just see alot of ppl dismiss slugterra ALOT by going with the "its just meant as a silly show" deal, and truly, I take every excuse I can to fight that. this show is really introspective of political worldbuilding! we should treat the writers like people who had something to say, cause clearly, they did, they had alot to say. peace and love peeps, long live slugterra analysis!

[faceless-muses]

SLUGTERRA MOM RANT

Slugterra is very much a story about fathers, like I mean this in the literally sense I think until the very end, only one mother actually appears, which is something I am most impressed with this show I have gotta admit

If someone has an tragic backstory, if parents are a primary focus in any way, it will deal with a father of some sort, without fail, and no mother will be mentioned in any form.

Twist father was murdered

Dana's father was killed

Blakk's father left him to be enslaved (granted given to this is Blakk I'm pretty sure she died from child birth)

and the very thing that drives the part outside of unhinged capitalism, what happened to Eli's father

and if I was a better meta poster, I would go in the inherent misogyny of this show, where fathers are the most important thing to the character while the mothers are erased from the light entirely.

But I am not that good with meta, so that's not the point of this post

The point of this post is about the two characters that are brought to light by the Out of the Shadows final, two very important characters while still being essentially non-entities

Eli and Tad's Mothers

Like, the moment, the very moment, their concepts are introduced, who Eli and Tad are immediately re-contextualized, with the way they act and other details about them into something very different

Eli's mother being gone completely from his life while its clear that other Shane's stepped up to raise him, with so many implications and questions, did she have a break down and left, was she not fit to raise him, was the abandonment even willing? Or was she iced out of the Shane Clan the moment it became clear her husband wasn't coming home and isolated from Eli so she doesn't take him with her and leave Slugterra without a champion?

None of this explained, but the important thing is the impact of her absence on Eli, when we meet him he's so indoctrinated into the Shane Traditions and the glorification/romanization of his father and the position of being a Shane itself, he sounds like he's trying to be his fathers mini-me

Will is a good man but a good man who has done bad things to others because of misjudgements of he makes of the situation he's in and what the position of being a Shane demands, and it has to be spelled out to Eli by the people who are still suffering from choices Will made (Twist and Dana) that his father has done bad things and hurt others, even though logically that is the most realistic outcome from being the sole person in the only authority position 90% of the underground population has, you are going to hurt people who don't deserve it to keep control.

But. Eli doesn't have anyone outside of the bubble of the Shane's in the surface, with his mother not around, an outsider of the clan that could've been very good insight on what the position very much entails and what his father is expected to do, Eli just has an echo chamber of people who have been in the position and have very good reasons for their actions if they were harmful (because everyone got them) that Eli has high thoughts and expectations that get brutally destroyed when he was faced with the reality outside of the echo chamber he was in.

he leans towards his father being a saint because he didn't have his mother that could have given him a more nuanced view of what his father did and was, and that lack of view from his mother leaves him unprepared for Slugterra in the more nitty gritty personal side of genuine people conflict where it's not just people with guns who are doing whatever the fuck they want because fuck it, this is emotional conflict his family has caused and now Eli is having to get cut while trying to pick up the pieces.

Tad's mother is a bit more subtle, as she's never directly alluded to via the plot or characters, outside of it being clear she and Tad are not close to one another, but her existence is hard to ignore when you start looking for traces of her in Tad. First thing is Tad's scent, Pronto is immediately suspicious of him, which is later revealed that Pronto was scenting Thaddius' scent on him, but it would be logical to consider the reason as to why Tad wasn't immediately clocked to being Thaddius' son is that it's clear the his mothers scent is what's blocking Pronto from clocking it until its pointed out to him.

The other big thing that's there's thing thing about Tad, is that he's an inventor, just like his father, but where the split is that Tad has an almost elegant way towards his creating, his gliders. That's a split from Thaddius' creating, creating weapons that's destructive as all hell, the gliders are unique in that they're not destructive and aren't meant for the use of much outside of exploring/settling curiosity (Tad heading down to slugterra), you get the feeling that this is something that Tad's mother encouraged in a way. The fact this is the first and last creation Tad makes completely on his own shown to us, while everything he brings out is just things Blakk's created that Tad is reusing, his creativity is completely stifled because he is trying so hard to be like his father that things that he created get tossed to the wayside until it is extremely needed

It's such a interesting thing with how this mirrors with Eli and Tad, they're intent with this connection on living up/past their own fathers, while aspects of their mothers are pushed away, they are stifled in some way because of the centering they are doing towards the fathers and must struggle because of it.

What is there to take away from all of this? The moment that this show decided to think about mothers for even a second everything becomes 10xs more interesting and of course they only introduce it at the very fucking end of this show so they never explore a damn thing

[mrros-e]

i agree with every single thought in this post, thank you dude!!! we dont even have their NAMES but the moms of slugterra are SO IMPORTANT TO EVERYONE, especially to Tad's character!

[slugterra-stan]

today is my birthday, and i will not come to the party unless the room looks like this:

[mrros-e]

NOOOO I MISSED IT

Happy birthday! I went to Olive Garden for the first time in a decade and cried, I hope u were having similar euphoric experiences!

[slugterra-stan]

TYSM!!!!

honestly olive garden is a completely valid option excuse to miss my birthday- i would have cried too

[mrros-e]

I gift you my finest treasure: the lasagna fritta appetizer

[soulfully1]

Crying in Italian

Fried lasagna is a hate crime people, put a NSFW warining at least I MEAN (sarcasm)

[mrros-e]

I know it's ungodly but holy hell it is delicious soul

[rozthewoz]

my personal slugterra headcanon id that one day dr blakk watched hetalia cause he thought at first that it was actual lore about the burning world but then ended up watching 7 seasons of gay countries doing straight bullshit

[mrros-e]

everyone go home this is the best headcanon

I feel like he'd be a Russia fangirl

[rozthewoz]

i could totally see him as a russia fangirl, thanks for helping me birth this drawing

[mrros-e]

IM HONORED THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!

[slugterra-stan]

today is my birthday, and i will not come to the party unless the room looks like this:

[mrros-e]

NOOOO I MISSED IT

Happy birthday! I went to Olive Garden for the first time in a decade and cried, I hope u were having similar euphoric experiences!

[slugterra-stan]

TYSM!!!!

honestly olive garden is a completely valid option excuse to miss my birthday- i would have cried too

[mrros-e]

I gift you my finest treasure: the lasagna fritta appetizer

[sluggy-side-blog]

My European mind cannot comprehend this

ALSO HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

[mrros-e]

Lasagna Fritta from Olive Garden! It's a fried lasagna pasta around this special type of ricotta and layered with meat sauce. Simple, but it's my childhood! Incredibly addictive! Meant for a whole table but I ate it all myself.

[mrros-e]

fanfiction about Qrow is amazing. It's like every writer fell in love with the Find The Gayest Possible Solution trope, but then they all came up with their own bizzare, but equally intriquing solutions. It's so refreshing! I'm never getting the same story. What's the situation: Polycule? Doomed/pining single gay man? Or bisexual man? Or single man who's only just learning he's gay? Did taiyang bang the whole team or did he merely only want to do that and failed somehow? Have one of them died? Have 2 of them died? They were all just friends but he liked Oz (older fics they didn't know any better) or ironwood (somehow still valid) or Clover? Or Robyn? ALL of them? Some of them, in different orders and severities? My messy bisexual birb, how I adore how we treat you! Everyone's torment nexus is so different! It's a delight! The variety is so amazing!

[slugterra-stan]

today is my birthday, and i will not come to the party unless the room looks like this:

[mrros-e]

NOOOO I MISSED IT

Happy birthday! I went to Olive Garden for the first time in a decade and cried, I hope u were having similar euphoric experiences!

[slugterra-stan]

TYSM!!!!

honestly olive garden is a completely valid option excuse to miss my birthday- i would have cried too

[mrros-e]

I gift you my finest treasure: the lasagna fritta appetizer

[slugterra-stan]

today is my birthday, and i will not come to the party unless the room looks like this:

[mrros-e]

NOOOO I MISSED IT

Happy birthday! I went to Olive Garden for the first time in a decade and cried, I hope u were having similar euphoric experiences!

[epitomeofsexdestruction]

Artdump. Some recent, some old.

Wip. Might finish it some day, one day, who knows when..

[mrros-e]

THATS SO PRETTY UR AMAZING OP

[rozthewoz]

my personal slugterra headcanon id that one day dr blakk watched hetalia cause he thought at first that it was actual lore about the burning world but then ended up watching 7 seasons of gay countries doing straight bullshit

[mrros-e]

everyone go home this is the best headcanon

I feel like he'd be a Russia fangirl

[slugterrorist]

Dude oh my fucking god people make jokes lock the fuck in and get a j*b

[sluggy-side-blog]

I’m neither btw, I was just bored during Christmas and y’all made it too easy 💀

[mrros-e]

hey, im taking decent friend applications if u and anyone else wants the job! my only criteria is eating the corn cake i bring to the friend BBQ. I can accommodate allergies or preferences on a case-by-case basis.

[sluggy-side-blog]

I have yet to experience the cake of corn before, my curiosity is piqued

[mrros-e]

behold, my personal notes upon my family's sacred recipe! My favorite food of all time! Always gets me invited to BBQs. God it's beautiful, I can stare at it for hours. And when I was a kid, I treated this like a dessert item! Now I am wise and when I make it, it's instantly my meal for every time of day till it's finished. Corn and sour cream and butter do not care if it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, or dessert time! And very easy to throw together.

the results (taken a few years back during college):

Corn cake my beloved most precious basic bitch white person meal how I adore you. Christmas is not Christmas without it.

[sluggy-side-blog]

During the beginning of the show, I kind of head-cannoned that dark water was nuclear waste that had contaminated its way down into the caverns from a nuclear waste site since those are typically repurposed caves and mines

And with how it “mutates” the slugs into something unstable, like how nuclear waste is dangerous due to being unstable elements which fire off high energy radiation, it felt like a clear parallel. The show already had strong themes of environmentalism and anti-pollution, an example of nuclear waste threatening the caverns would’ve been cool as hell!!!

With the whole Shane’s originating on the surface and having to return regularly, I figured once the source of “dark water” was discovered Eli would realise that there’s a reason why the Shane’s have to live double lives, that he would have to return topside to prevent harm from seeping down into the 99 caverns, intentionally or not.

Idk, I’m just saying I’m a little disappointed with the fact it’s just the darkbane and their weird cavern stuff I guess. The themes could’ve been so much cooler than “evil stuff down there bad”.

Maybe I should write a fic, idk

[beastofgilchrist]

okay I'm not sure if u tagged me so I can ask u or the og poster BUT

"The stone of the palace glinted amongst the moonlight, basking in liberty of a celebration that has never occurred before in this sick, cruel world."

(I just tagged you for the hell of it, don't worry.)

Levi stands alone in a corner, idly sipping something fruity while flexing the fingers of a freshly regrown hand.

A gaggle of children barrel past, their faces still streaked with mud from the mines, but that doesn't stop them from giggling amongst themselves, and the blue-eyed man can't fight the smile that adorns his lips at the sight.

The celebration is in full swing, the body of King Didn't-Bother-Remembering-His-Name still cooling in the courtyard.

He'd already locked this world's Keyhole, defeated the Heartless His Majesty had summoned during their fight, and freed every single slave on this world.

In other words, a fairly uneventful Tuesday for the ravenette Keybearer.

[pilot-boi]

A bird and his babies

Any guy can be a babygirl, but it takes a man to be a single mother

[zizirobinson]

[mrros-e]

oh no I'm going to watch RWBY again aren't i