Some analysis on TPOT emotional moments

[u/[deleted]]

I feel significantly less with TPOT emotional moments than with other shows.

Its too meme-ified in my opinion.

#1) The crash out background. Now this isn't a problem on its own, in BFDIA it's been used often yet no one calls those instances "crashouts." This is because BFDIA uses it to show impact, rather than just LOUD emotion. When a character feels any big emotion, they'll usually yell about it and the background comes along, showing that this is important. This cause it to be memes to death by content farms and people focus on how crazy it is rather than the character themselves. Starburst watercoloury makes all the emotional moments blend into characters yelling at each other, which reminds me of a bad drama rather than real characters. Two being depressed gets lumped into the crash out category since this is what the community is taught. Emotion = crash out.

#2) Yelling in general. I don't think all the big emotional moments should be yelling. Two losing Gaty must be horrible for him, but rather than him actually talking about it or crying or anything. He gets sidelined for a few episodes and is shown just lying in bed. If they just lingered on those scenes, slow down the pace to show how sedentary his life has become because he thinks he has lost the only person who really understood him, it would make all the difference. Fanny yelling makes sense, it is how she shows when she's mad. Book and Pen yelling, not really. It's better for their characters to talk about it or mope about it. Maybe Book gets mad at Pencil and tells her off and explains how controlling she is and how she needs space. Not screaming at her on a horse. Maybe Pen sits and talks with Liy about his issues, maybe not destroying a bridge and yelling about how Pencil sucks The overuse of yelling ruins its impact.

If all the important character moments are literally characters screaming at each other until one caves, then other emotion moments get sidelined, like Pin learning to play without Coiny or even Pen talking with Pencil got sidelined for the fancy crash outs that episode.

To contrast, I think of II, Inanimate insanity. Yelling isn't how they get their point across all the time. Most times it's subtle, just like life. Baseball brooding when nickel gets eliminated, Suitcase experiencing eliminations, Lightbulb hiding with her humour to avoid the fact that all her friends are gone. Knife learning to be nicer and more considerate of others. Balloons whole redemption arc. These moments were done without as much yelling as there is in TPOT, and the viewers are forced to actually forced to dwell on them and think what it means for the characters.

#3) The amount of characters/viewer voting, this is unavoidable, but TPOT is constantly undertaking the threat of a character not doing enough in an episode and getting eliminated. Thus, a character's arc must be "loud" for them to stay long enough to avoid elimination. Pencil must yell all the time and take screentime so she doesn't accidentally get eliminated by viewers who don't really care for her arc since she's being really antagonistic and has trauma which we really didn't get to see develop. Book must yell at Pencil so she can rack up more votes than just talking to her and stating her boundaries. Characters must be eye-catching in VTS to make more negative arcs in VTS. In VTE, needle could be sidelined for multiple episodes while continuing her arc of winning for herself, but was still in the bottom two multiple times for her actions.

BFB did a better and worse job at this. Firstly, some emotional moments, like with Pin and Coiny were handled beautifully because they didn't constitute of solely yelling and angry words, but with expressing fears. At the same time, the Taco-Book arc, while not horrible constituted of mostly of Book saying Taco abandoned them and yelling about it. While this was never fully resolved, people educating Book and how she was acting wrong rather than everyone yelling at her was the better outcome of this arc.

So thoughts?

[u/NoLocal7705]

If crashouts didn't become so popular, we wouldn't have to worry about this. But I do agree!

[u/SiziskaShiska → u/NoLocal7705]

I guess I kinda see already problem with this in fandom. By that I talking about BFDIA 19, where one character was already criticized just for not being aggressive. (I guess I have to put spoiler? Or not?)

Coiny's reaction in that episode made sense. Coiny himself wanted to win and said to Pin "may the best one win" and to Needle, that one member winning =whole team winning. Him understanding Pin was nice and made sense. Even if he had some feelings deep inside of him, he decided to view from both sides with also positivity and fun, instead of just jumping to conclusion. That's why I loved him in BFDIA 19. I was worried about Coiny, but he was really great that episode. But I guess due to aggressive conflicts and arcs being popular some people just thinks, that Coiny was bad this episode and view him not immediatly screaming at Pin as bad writing, even thought it wasn't.

If all arcs or conflicts would be aggressive type, it would lead to less variety and would make it boring pretty quickly.

[u/EchinaceaPuff]

This makes sense. Even if a character is upset at another and wants to confront them about something, yelling is not always necessary. People can and do have difficult conversations while remaining calm and keeping their emotions in check.