roti defender

indulgent td side blog 18 🇬🇧

[rotidefender]

Having a bias and a preference in media isn’t a problem if you know you have that. To make it about total drama because that’s my kinda expertise if you will, I love revenge of the island, but dislike pahkitew. I am aware that the Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I am also aware that revenges writing is generally a lot better in almost every way, but with that in mind I’m able to look at a lot of my critiques for pi and identify it in revenge and criticise it for these issues. I’ve noticed one too many td fans having a bias for their favourite characters or seasons and not being able to critique them well enough. I like Dave. I know Dave’s writing isn’t particularly good. I know Dave’s writing has a lot in common with Trent in action, whom I don’t like. I can also see that Dave was intentional and Trent was not. If you wish for your opinions on this show and media in general to be taken seriously and to be involved in conversations with others that have strong opinions and get theirs taken seriously you need to be able to identify what is your opinion and what is objective. We, as a society actually this isn’t even just a TD thing, but it’s applicable here, but we need to stop the belief that everything is an opinion. Every opinion is equal when someone’s opinion is going against fact. Unfortunately for media analysis not every (analytical*) opinion can be correct. And I think as a fandom and for all fandoms actually the minute we can accept that we can have actually interesting and productive conversations about the media.

[rotidefender]

We need to stop using character assassination, flanderization, derailment, mischaracterisation and other words to imply the characters unnatural change in the story interchangeably. It doesn’t work like that I fear.

[rotidefender]

Was speaking with a friend that hasn’t seen anything beyond island and she said to me that she’d watch ever season “except dramarama” in which. I mean I’m not gonna disagree, I’ve only watched a handful of episodes. Like I can count on my two hands the amount of episodes I’ve watched. It’s like eight or something. But while I agreed with her not wanting to watch it I did disagree with the sentiment that it’s as bad as people make it out to be.

Because for what it’s trying to do, I think it actually does it quite well. Especially in regard to some of the characters and their characterisation, and especially two I’ll touch on in a second.

But if you view the show as intended, an almost AU style project for the writers to earn some money with their existing product while appealing to what they where probably advised to by the network or producers (or who knows, they might’ve made dramarama for the love of the game.) it’s fine. It’s so inoffensive I get quite shocked when people are so appalled by it. Sure there’s some weird things in there like the fart fairy is. A choice. But overall I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as it should be and you can just kind of ignore it.

I’ve heard people complain and compare Reboot Chef to Dramarama Chef of which other than the outfit I guess I can see the comparison but that’s arguably the only effect on the actual show (of which compared to him slowly losing relevance as the show goes on, I don’t think it was as bad of a decision. But I’m in the minority with that opinion.), of which seasons that have actually actively negatively effected the Total Drama brand series whatever you wanna call it don’t get nearly as much hate in comparison to the “baby show.”

Id even argue it helped them get their footing back with the reboot…

It’s accepted that Total Drama had a downward spiral with each season, having to “up themselves” with each new installment, giving themselves a forced break with RR and Dramarama was probably for the best. The season would’ve probably kept spiralling until it was unsalvageable meaning we wouldn’t have the comeback the reboot had.

I also think that collectively Duncan and Courtney’s 3rd best interpretations are in Dramarama after island and action gets shot a million times

But that’s for part two…

[astralcatoon]

Yay

[total-drama-scase]

Here's ScaryChase as Gomez and Morticia Addams! This idea is STOLEN from the GigglyIggly Youtube comments btw. So say thank you to that random commenter!

[rotidefender]

Lindsay doesn’t suck as much as people make her out to be and isn’t as bad as the rest of the all starers because she’s only there for one episode, and that’s not because she’s not there for a lot of time it’s because you can excuse more when it’s just a one off.

Lindsay has been treated pretty well by the writers in her portrayals and even while world tour isn’t as good I can forgive it because it doesn’t stray too much from her previous iterations and she’s also on a team with wet rag dj, cheater Bridgette, and switch up Leshawna, so by proximity she looks better just based on that.

And while I don’t really like trying to defend a characters actions by trying to come up with defences not really based in what happens in the show, I think that Lindsay’s all stars portrayal is allowed to have that “well…” statement surrounding her playing up the dumbness because she doesn’t really want to be there.

I don’t think this undoes the bad writing surrounding her in all stars but based on it only being one episode, I can forgive it more.

But that raises the point of “well what about Courtney? She’s only really derailed/flanderised/written badly/ect in SMS??”

To that I say, look at the rest of the show. Like I said, Lindsay has been handled pretty well and her fall off in world tour isn’t as bad as it should be based on other factors and that… it also just isn’t that bad. In comparison to Courtney who has been on a downward spiral since the special. Now I’m sure hypothetical reader is screaming at me “why can’t Courtney get away with this but Lindsay can??” Well.. Courtney did. Her appearance in the special is quite different from her in island, but she gets the “well…” treatment and the benefit of the doubt. And she gets it again in action. And she only starts becoming an issue and her writing inexcusable in world tour and then all stars. Lindsay only has the all stars episode but Courtney’s writing has been inconsistent and uhh I can’t think of any other word other than bad for a lot longer, meaning it’s less defendable than Lindsay’s.

Lindsay’s also lasts a lot less than a lot of other all stars characters, but like I said, she’s here for one episode, whereas we get a whole season of Cameron and Zoey allowing Mike/Mal to do whatever.

I lost my point towards the end TLDR; Lindsay’s writing isn’t as bad because of a lack of time and also her writing previously being pretty consistently good, meaning her fall off here doesn’t feel as insulting. Similarly, Heather is a definite downgrade here but part of why she works more here than most others is because she has been consistently good before.