So, regarding S4... Knight Shift could have happened one episode before Lava House Fever, it's not as if Marco hadn't already earned his knighthood by that point and Eclipsa would've done it gladly, kingdom customs be damned; CotBM could've been a misdiagnosis, something like confusing the Blood Moon Ball with the Blood Moon Bowl (if you write a W fancily enough, it is possible to confuse the "all" with an "owl"), instead of just straight up calling it Blood Moon Curse, this to have Tom (1/ )
gather up the dorks and tell them "I've got the solution to your problems" fully believing it is, only to find out after the dance/Severing stone thing is done that he misread something. Naturally that dance would do nothing to "sever" Star and Marco's feelings, but it would make things click for Tom faster and with no external cause to blame, he'd figure out that Tomstar's not working for different reasons. He'd go on his journey of self discovery earlier. From there on, have "chill" eps (2/5)to let everything sink in. Four 11 min plotbuilding segments where Eclipsa sorts out her issues, Moon builds a new Mewni inadvertently, and most importantly Star and Marco try to take their mind off "what just happened with Tom". After that, cue in the Starco Episode, yay! After this, they just keep solving things like they did in the rest of the season, right up until Cornonation. By now things with Tom should be good, so he can join the Beach Day and make it a fun "calm before storm" (3/5)episode; even moreso than the canon version. Shit hits fan, and the dorks face it just like before. So, Mama Star would still have Marco's fantastic moment, pouring his heart out to Star even though she already knows he loves her. And Here to Help? In that episode, they would go off to the barn to wind down their concerns; Marco's worries about not being enough of a boyfriend, and Star's worries about not being enough of anything. Have 'em kiss and laugh, it will be alright. Then (4/5)have everything else run its course (yes, this includes Moon's dumb Mina gambit), all of it leading to the conclusion that magic must be destroyed. Thus, we have the finale... And here, now we're pretty in-line with canon aren't we? Let the finale just happen, including their capes this time. Whew... That's my take on this excercise, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, it's irrelevant in the end. Non-sequitur: I just made a 13 min AMV of Starco, someone please send help (5/5)
That’s not too bad, I can imagine something like this. Even though - and I’m just nitpicking to play Devil’s advocate I don’t want to disrespect your ideas - The Knight Shift is not the kind of episode that’d realistically happen so close to the series premiere, each season in most shows is kind of a world on its own, and big events get paced more or less evenly (yes, it sucks, it greatly limits the narrative, but those are the rules of the game), and having it happen so early into the season with Marco moving to Earth (no way to have Star and Marco still live together in the castle AND date) while still waiting half a season to introduce some “new chapter in our lives” themes. Also, what would Star and Marco do for all those segments while they’re dating but also not Here to Help levels of seriousness and commitment either? Just surface level PDA like Tom and Star did for most of the season? What deeply emotional moments they could share without “burning up the good stuff” before the finale?
Your way to rewrite the season is interesting and it could work, I’m not going “nu-uuh you’re wrong!”, I have absolutely no authority or writing skill to do that, but I also have to recognize that a season of a serialized TV shows with episodic 11 minutes segments but also heavy linear plot and continuity has A LOT of details, limits, requirements. Each segment has to have a standalone plot, can’t put too many segments addressing the same themes and issues in a row, can’t have too many segments happening in a row with full temporal continuity, there has to be an X amount of cliffhangers, for each questions or situation that gets solved there have to be X other ones, stuff like that. And this makes rewriting stuff exponentially harder - if the goal is to imagine what the season could have actually been to deliver things in a different way, obviously. If it’s just for the sake of having fun, a fanfiction, a fancomic, it’s an entirely different deal.
