#legoblogging

[jadeykitties]

i complained about this before but it needed to be its own fleshed out post: no one should have to read supplementary books or twitters just to understand the characters, setting, or world building. but especially not kids watching shows aimed at their demographic.

no child should have to beg their parents to buy them a book just to be more familiar with a newly introduced side character who would have been more plot relevant had the series not been cancelled. fletcher bowman should not have had the majority of his story exist in the forbidden power. frankly, the only kids who would have been interested in the book would be kids who are already watching the tv series because it's not the most friendly story for newcomers, and most would rather books about one of the main characters rather than newly introduced characters who appear maybe twice at best in what would be the final season because it was cancelled.

no child should have to download and play the merlok 2.0 app just to be able to access and watch an exclusive two-part episode about the knights' backstories. especially considering the fact that it almost became lost media - i'm grateful that it didn't and is preserved on web archive, but it dangerously came close. and its something that almost happened because they never had plans to air it on tv with the rest of the series at some point. but even then - the fact that the rest of the series is on tubi and knights of the realm isn't?

AND NO CHILD SHOULD HAVE TO BUY SUPPLEMENTARY BOOKS TO KNOW ANYTHING MEANINGFUL ABOUT ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS. OH MY GOD. i love axl so much, he's usually framed primarily as the food-obsessed comedic relief but he's observant and quick witted. he is NOT the dumb muscle character! he's just underutilized in comparison to tommy andreasen's favorites clay or aaron. and though hes extremely emotional and hotheaded he can also be the most down to earth and mature of the knights. and... he's the most artistic, creatively driven of the knights. you could potentially deduce that from his lute playing, but it's really understated in comparison to making him obsessed with food. but what if i told you he loves pottery? that he is skilled at still life sketches? what if i told you he reads the in-universe equivalent of shakespeare? and his favorite play is a parody of titus andronicus? what if i told you he's in a band???

you wouldn't believe me, would you? its all true - but you'd only know that if you are able to get your hands on a copy of one of the books - the knights code, potentially also the character encyclopedia - and read them. but you shouldn't have to. information about one of the main characters should just be in the text of the series. in fact, i think more people would probably appreciate if a lot of the jokes about his gluttony were replaced with more thought-out jokes about his other interests. in fact, a lot more people would be appreciative and amenable to axl's presence as a character if his other attributes were given as much focus.

but then again the writers play favorites, and it shows. you can tell they've all got biases and they for sure do not like or respect some of the main characters (lance and axl) as much as others (clay and aaron) and it shows in how they're treated in the narrative and by other characters. as it stands, we're just lucky that eclair exists to humanize axl and his love of food by transforming it into another facet of his creativity. it doesn't completely solve the issue of making so much of axl's character about food without showcasing his other interests, or with underutilizing him as a knight or as a friend to the other knights. but at least eclair treats axl as a fleshed out person with more to him than gluttony.

[jadeykitties]

[jadeykitties]

rewatching nexo knights with the reveals of season 4 in mind makes everything crazier because first of all it doesnt excuse or justify the way monstrox abused jestro or anything and it also doesn't change the fact he did specifically target jestro because he (at least initially) correctly assumed he'd be easy to control BUT. he is ALSO projecting on jestro like literally the entire time. he is trying to turn him into monstrox 2, which he can never be, but like. monstrox just assumes that jestro wants the same things he wants and is motivated by the same things he is motivated by but with THAT in mind, it recontextualizes a LOT of what monstrox says to him and about him. like. guy who randomly freaked out and starts talking about how a wizard council supposedly looked down on him; okay tell me more about how no one likes you no one respects you the only way to be respected is to become more powerful and be feared and what it implies about how you perceive yourself. whats that, you have the conflicting desire to be normal and fit in but also stand out and be the weirdest person in a room? alright man.

the second thing that becomes crazier when rewatching after season 4 is that merlok is just straight up obsessed with monstrox and its extremely obvious that tommy andreasen never intended that at all HOWEVER the circumstances are such as they are that... merlok is repeatedly written in ways where a fondness for monstrox even AFTER he turned evil and ruined countless lives are implicit and in fact necessary for the story to meaningfully function. monstrox knows things he can only know if merlok let him know outside of extremely specific circumstances. merlok describes the fractions of monstrox's soul as precious to him. merlok, uh... creates nexo powers in monstrox's image to assist the nexo knights. merlok blatantly admits he could have killed monstrox, should have killed monstrox, but didn't want to. man whatever

[jadeykitties]

the thing about nexo knights and its relationship with misogyny is like... so fucking bizarre. setting aside the inherent misogyny of being targeted towards boys meaning it has to have more male characters than female characters (because its a toy-driven ip and too many girls means that the brand is competing with itself. insane capitalism reasons) it does otherwise treat its female characters better than other works by the same writer (chima, ninjago) BUT THEN. THERES THE STRUCTURAL MISOGYNY IMPLIED BY THERE BEING SO FEW FEMALE KNIGHTS, RIGHT? EXCEPT... THERE ISN'T STRUCTURAL MISOGYNY. IN-UNIVERSE.

like: its a setting where women DO have equal opportunities and aren't discriminated against based on gender. there is no structural misogyny barring women from specific careers, as any woman can get any career any man can without being alienated or othered by male peers. we see in knights of the realm that macy was NOT the only female student in the knights academy even if she was the only one to graduate that year (the implication being that most students prior to the series either flunk out or transfer as a result of the peaceful era following monstrox's defeat, so only the most dedicated to becoming knights graduate. and also the richmonds, who are nepo babies.) but it's clear there's no glass ceiling she, specifically, needed to break as both her mother and brickney spears graduated previously. so it's not exclusive to men or abrasive, aggressive tomboys. the only instance of a man acting inappropriately towards a woman is jorah tightwad being a sex pest at macy, and he's framed as an outsider who is somehow a competitor and rival to king halbert so... like... not indicative of knighton society if theres implications hes a lord of some other society, the only thing that would make his dynamic with king halbert make sense.

BUT. THEN. THERE'S MACY'S SUBPLOT IN SEASON 1. to summarize it, she is a princess who longs to become a knight against her fathers wishes and is denied the same acknowledgement and respect as her peers in a public ceremony, who must work twice as hard to prove herself and earn the right to be acknowledged and pursue her dream career that is historically primarily or exclusively males work. a trope and premise based on and relying on gender roles, and the ways they are impacted and defined by misogyny. and yet, circumstantially the reasons she is denied the title and peerage of knighthood are not about misogyny - her father is just a worrywart pacifist and thus fears for his only child and the heir to the kingdom's safety pursuing a potentially dangerous career despite a literal century of peacetime. makes sense in theory but also often feels so completely disjointed and at odds with the rest of the story. because the political aspects of being a leader are often glossed over or irrelevant to macy's struggles with being a princess.

the reason for this is presumably - seemingly - because it was being written primarily by male writers who did want to be a certain measure of progressive, but still have their own internal biases about the kinds of stories that can be told with female characters or how to portray them. and/or suffer from a lack of imagination on narrative ideas for them and the kinds of roles these fictional women can play. they want a setting free of the trappings of misogyny, yet they themselves are not free of it, and so it results in a product that is trying to have its cake and eat it too. the setting doesn't have institutional misogyny, yet the narrative is based on tropes based on the impact of institutional misogyny. so what does that leave us with? a very confused arc for a shows main female character, and even less certain world-building in junction.

[jadeykitties]

me when i do the nexo knights tierlist

[jadeykitties]

nexo knights au where everythings the same except merlok is swapped with wanda and monstrox is swapped with miriam (specifically in the context of my witch miriam theory)

[jadeykitties]

okay. monstrox was defeated a hundred years ago, and all the monsters were sealed away until the series began. the kingdom of knighton had been at peace for a hundred years, characters like eggred for example have no frame of reference what wartime is like or how to handle it, and no experience with fighting at all. and this is all public knowledge and substantiated by every character ever and this aspect doesn't seem to be history revisionism - the only part they didn't know was that merlok didn't kill monstrox, just turned him into a book. hama says that if they must fight again they will fight, and i know some take it as a literal statement that she had personally fought... but tbh nothing she says comes across that way to me - more of an objective acknowledgement that knighton is a kingdom that has history of battling against the forces of evil and monsters (which are not entirely the same thing.)

and yet, brickland is visibly scarred and has a strangely personal and deep seated hatred of magic despite the fact he should be too young to have faced off against monstrox or the monsters prior to the series. i know in the knights code he talks about going to school with ned knightly, who has a living middle aged brother, despite explicitly dying 100 years ago - which implies that brickland would be old enough to be involved in that same battle himself. yet though he talks about facing villains who used the forbidden powers, he never says he faced monstrox's forces specifically. but either way, either brickland and jokes are Way, Way older than they're meant to be... or everyone is much older than they're supposed to be. and potentially, by a hundred years. and double potentially, aging slowly. and this is not unique to wizards.

mmmm... pass!

the easiest way to fix the ned knightly thing is to just make jokes' brother ned knightly iv named after the original ned knightly who has a huge ego about being the great-grandson of the original ned knightly. which would works well with the fact brickland has beef with the ned he went to school with, but also why he feels so fine talking shit about him. its weirdly irreverent towards a guy who literally sacrificed himself in a way more extreme than anyone else who had evidently faced monstrox in a way that doesn't seem in line with brickland glorifying knighthood... but it would make sense if it wasnt the guy who sacrificed himself to help defeat monstrox, but his coattails riding descendant.

as for brickland talking about... facing against villains, plural, who used the forbidden powers against the people of knighton. um. i don't fucking know. thats something id need to finish my rewatch to even begin trying to logic out in a way that doesn't piss me off. my best idea right now, without refreshing myself on how things are described in-series, is that perhaps before becoming principal of the knights academy he was one of the latest knights charged with subduing the stream of wizards who had to have been succumbing to the corruption of forbidden powers for the last century until approximately 21 years ago when the last wizard to be affected by the corruption finally succumbed to it (wanda)

[jadeykitties]

comparing nexo knights to ninjago often feels unfair. bc one is meant to be mostly comedic while the other is meant to be mostly action and drama. they have different strengths as shows. for example nexo knights treats female characters better that had more narrative importance from the get-go......................... but ninjago was better at balancing its cast of characters WITHOUT having most of their characterization in tie-in material like books :sob: