had a long convo w a pal abt structural and dialogue pacing in western animated shows that is too long to summarize and also I don’t remember it but the gist is I think the recent trend is pretty unforch for all types of pacing and I hear it even in shows I consider p good (•wl house, @mphibia) because it’s like. 1) even timing wise I feel like sentences happen too close together, 2) I think there are ways to carry over more complex developments *and* self-contained episodic arcs in ways I’m not necessarily seeing, & I’d want to hold up su and motorcity as examples; of course, ppl can make the argument that su had a lot of time that allowed for more extended setup & payoff, & motorcity had the full 20min instead of the 11min format, but it’s like… in motorcity there’s the arc where mike gets very mother hen and it gets resolved within the ep, which makes sense bc 1) has an inciting incident, 2) plays off established traits of Loves His Friends, 3) after resolved, makes sense for it not to come up again bc they were able to resolve it in a satisfying way. now consider chuck’s character arc, which you can map out in the three chuck eps (IF you watch them in order and not disney’s airdate) (😒)—blue thunder revealing insecurity, resolved within the ep in that the INCIDENT is resolved but the insecurity isn’t; fearless being a natural extension of that insecurity w chuck making up for what he lacks, then having to accept This Ain’t The Way; the larping eps has him swing into ‘yeah I accept that I’m just kind the extra and I’m gonna step out of the way for the for-real leader’ and then getting his strengths highlighted & acknowledged in a way that completes his character arc. this isn’t to say that toh and amph doesn’t do this, bc amph does a PHENOMENAL job setting up the dominos for the anne-sasha-marcy conflict, but I do think it suffers a bit from not having being able to have time to marinate in certain developments whereas in comparison su was able to have certain relational developments be background b plots rather than a plots (compared to amph which had the most important rx stuff as A Plots All The Time even when it was a chain in the domino and not resolved within its episode). my friend was specifically talking abt sasha & anne’s reunion & I deffo agree that I really wanted a lot more awkwardness and maybe a two-parter or full 20min rather than it being resolved in the ep its introduced in. and at the core of it I feel like the pacing issues that stick out to me is that the most compelling rx dynamics & developments sometimes have to *compete* w plot rather being *entwined* w plot, and sometimes it is but what I want the writers to do. is watch eeaao. it’s like the logistics don’t always match up w the emotions as well as it could, whereas in motorcity from what I remember there’s *always* an emotional link; e.g. julie being torn between her love for her father as a father and spearheading a rebellion to overthrow his tyrannical rule. actually on that, a great example is when they’re sitting opposite of each other and she’s telling the burners how to counter his orders as he’s giving the orders—the logistics are there, but mostly to push the emotional tension of the scene and serve as an INCREDIBLE compare-contrast with julie and her dad. actually what I’m getting from all of this is I want to rewatch motorcity. but you know what I mean, right? the logistics, the practical and structural story needs are INTRINSICALLY tied to character motivations and interpersonal dynamics and character consistency and character development, especially because the team has a diverse set of focuses and priorities (except texas) which means there’s no dearth of angles to play with to get that logistical/practical/structural looping back into the characters. oh and we were also talking about how gravity falls also had good pacing with the scale of episodic development and the family dynamics being the core of the World Ending Developments which allowed it to keep a good sense of pacing and focus (again like eeaao)
