// MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE MOST RECENT EPISODE
Why I’m disappointed in the Uranus & Neptune convo in The Earth’s Core, Part 3
I want to start by saying that a) no I don’t hate Neptune and b) I think Neptune and Uranus reconciling is GOOD!
I’m just disappointed af in how it happened!!
For one, it almost feels like Neptune is literally just saying Uranus feels bad because his attitude about it isn’t good enough? It feels like telling a bullying victim that it’s because he’s reacting…? Like it’s his fault?
He’s not being genuinely supportive it seems like he’s literally just bulldozing Uranus’s feelings and saying move on! get a better attitude! laugh about it too! without actually digging into why Uranus doesn’t like it and trying to understand That… which isn’t what I expected from Neptune. If they’re really best friends, why isn’t he trying to understand/empathize?
Saying “just change your perspective” is not supportive and doesn’t HELP either when this is something Uranus has dealt with for billions of years? Neptune might cope with it that way, but he and Uranus are NOT THE SAME PERSON and they should not be expected to deal with it the same way. If Uranus wants the jokes to stop completely they should STOP! This is the solar system he’s lived in for 4.5 billion years why is that so hard to understand?? Why are they acting like the jokes are okay and it’s URANUS who needs to change???
And he started it out by essentially saying “everyone has problems right now you’re not special” which is… an interesting method… and sure everyone else might also have problems but is it really important to point that out when he already feels overlooked and like an afterthought?? It feels like an excuse more than anything, because it’s like… pushing aside how Uranus feels?? Which, again, is not what I expected from Neptune.
Neptune calling him his best friend at that point is funny because what friend treats an emotional situation like it’s such a flippant thing? What kind of friend ignores the core problem and acts like the way he’d deal with it is the only healthy way?? Like Uranus HAS to become okay with the jokes and that’s the only option…
OR, guess what, or they could *stop* saying them?? And if it’s a case of Neptune knowing the rest of the Solar System won’t, then LET him leave without any sort of mental games?! What’s the use in staying somewhere that doesn’t respect you?
And it doesn’t help that it goes from Neptune dismissing his feelings to Uranus doing an abrupt 180 heel-turn (about the name Caelus, about everyone making his name a constant joke) without any warning or indication of it. (It literally ends the first part of the scene before on a random line from Neptune where he said “who cares?” WHEN IT’S OBVIOUS THAT URANUS HAS CARED ABOUT IT?????? THIS WHOLE TIME?)
It feels like this is just Neptune using humor for everything (which he's done BEFORE) in a way that doesn’t fit with what Uranus needs (it’s already been shown that he doesn’t react well to making jokes of it, i.e. the Battle of Planet X episodes and how Neptune tried to confront him in those), AND rather than actually following the characters they’ve developed and showing that it doesn’t work and that Uranus needs some other method of comfort, they twisted URANUS’s character to fit it!! They changed his character so that Neptune’s way of confronting him would work! That is so weird!! And off-putting! I suppose if you look at it from the start and realize that Neptune has never tried to get anyone else to stop the Ur-anus jokes (the Early Solar System episodes) that makes sense, but it makes their friendship just so shallow because why isn’t he when it’s clear Uranus doesn’t like it?
I think that Neptune affirming that he would follow Uranus away from the Solar System and that he’s his best friend and he wouldn’t forget him are GOOD THINGS, and they fit his character, but sandwiched with everything else in this scene, it honestly makes very little sense to me because he’s *not* acting like it! He’s acting like Uranus’s actual issues are trivial and solved with a simple attitude switch when it’s not that SIMPLE!! I’d understand this more if they were trying to show that Uranus and Neptune are incompatible friends in how they prefer to handle things and need to work to actually maintain a friendship, but they very obviously aren’t!! Neptune is fine with accepting the bad to a degree that’s almost impossible! Uranus obviously isn’t? So why are they twisting his personality so he does?
It feels like there should be more TALKING in between, but they just skipped straight to the resolution without building anything else between! No other talking other than the first, unless they’re trying to make us think Uranus and Neptune talked more when we didn’t see?? No matter how long they may have been traveling, it makes NO SENSE for him to have changed his mind that quickly! He’s disliked his name for BILLIONS of years. That’s impossibly long for us to comprehend!!! It feels frankly IMPOSSIBLE that he’d change his mind so quickly.
Not to mention this comes AFTER the episode where he realized just how little Jupiter knew about him (him only being able to spout scientific facts) despite the fact that he’d tried to be friends with him and Saturn for seemingly billions of years? Uranus is really *that* emotionally stable to immediately start joking about it? Because he’s dealt with the pain of his name being made fun of (by everyone!) for BILLIONS of years, but one conversation with Neptune where he dismissed his feelings and said *he’d* feel fine and dandy about it if he had the name, and Uranus is suddenly a-okay with it all? *And* not only okay with it, but making multiple jokes about it on his own (not just his name, but his smell, which he’s ALREADY been shown to heavily dislike and hate talking about?) and laughing at Neptune’s jokes? Out of NOWHERE?
It almost feels like he's just shoved himself too far in the opposite direction in an attempt to just forget all the hurt that they inspired before. (Which people do!)
And NO I’m not saying Uranus can’t ever become okay with the jokes about his name (though I think from what we saw of his character before this it was *highly* unlikely), nor am I saying that it’s wrong of him to do so, I’m saying that this feels like something that would come an entire season’s worth of character development later! It feels like it should take more time! But it’s all forced in ONE SCENE!! One scene that’s already split in half by the other plotlines in this episode! It’s like they wanted to skip straight to a Uranus who’s moved past his problems but they didn’t want to do the WORK or the character development to get there, so they shoved it all into one conversation that makes no sense!
Also, they didn’t bring X up at all (other than Neptune saying that’s who he was trying to find) despite the fact that he was the final blow to Uranus and Neptune’s friendship (at least on Uranus's side) and was the catalyst for Uranus LEAVING AT ALL!! I’m not saying Uranus needed to start preaching about him, I’m saying that he should have been BROUGHT UP?! Ignoring that completely makes their reconciliation feel incomplete, because you’re ignoring a huge piece of HOW they fell apart! (At least for Uranus, again, because as far as we know Neptune never felt like Uranus was anything but his best friend!) How was X not brought up at all? Uranus didn’t even mention that he was giving up on finding him, he just happily started making jokes about himself?? And then they just turn around and start heading back to the Solar System without any sort of additional discussion? Uranus gives up just like that without any kind of mention of his reason for leaving? When his name wasn’t even the ONLY ISSUE HERE????
I’m just so freaking disappointed in this but at the same time i guess it's what i expect from SolarBalls at this point… hurried resolutions in which the actual problem is completely glossed over and ignored.
Note that is my opinion and that you can disagree with me, but this entire interaction has just left a bad taste in my mouth… so that’s why I’m very disappointed with how it went (to say nothing of the fact that it was a very short set of scenes sandwiched in between other plotlines rather than the standalone episode/arc it deserved). You don’t have to agree with every point, you don’t have to agree with me, but this is how I feel about it 😊
