To be fair, Lurk and I would have to stop first considering that's not what the thread is about lol. But regardless, the phrase "rent free" exists for a reason.
Bit late, sorry.
You two aren't really a problem, and given that it's still related to Lily's bad takes on things I don't think conversations about Steven Universe are unwarranted at all. You wouldn't have to bring ti up if Lily didn't keep doing so, after all.
What I'm referring to is the fact that, after her 'SU is Garbage' video, she made a statement saying that it was her last word on SU, she'd spent more than enough time on it and making the video, she was done talking about it. Super done. Totally done. She even had a mandate in her Discord that discussion of Steven Universe would bring down the banhammer.
Then she kept on talking about it and when somebody called her out she said "Well you guys keep asking am I supposed to do what I said I would do and stop?" So not only did she not shut up, she blamed her fans for her not shutting up.
Lilly doesn't take hyper competent characters and put them against other hyper competent characters, or put them in a situation where their skills don't matter nor have an event that causes them to question their own ideas and find the strength to reinforce them. No. They walk down a straight path, no diversions, no hold ups, no stumbles; just a moment or two of whining that the path is five hours too long.
If those five hours were Christmas shopping the path would also be abusive.
Other thing is, these characters also aren't hyper-competent. Maybe the narrative tries to say they are, but generally speaking an audience is going to notice that the world twists to serve their needs. They'll be commended for being so smart or funny or sassy, for being so clever or powerful, but the audience is going to recognize that they only succeeded because their opponents were even more incompetent, or they won because the universe just twisted in their direction.
There
are plenty of hyper-competent characters out there who do resolve their conflicts 'easily' (mostly I'm thinking of the Great Detectives, but yeah, characters like Superman also count), but again, it's in
how they resolve those conflicts. Watching somebody who is legitimately excellent at what they do is a thrill-- it's why Holmes works, it's why Ender's Game is exciting, it's why Westley/The Dread Pirate Roberts can get away with outmaneuvering everybody in that story even when mostly dead. A legitimately hyper-competent character is a
joy to watch.
Mary -- or her brother Gary --
isn't a joy to watch because the world has to accommodate them and then validate them to convince the audience that they really are the best. When opposition finally catches up to her it's not because Mary was actually too weak, it's because the universe suddenly decided that she needed a third-act nadir and contrived to make that happen, too. This is exactly how The Sith Resurgence is playing out-- Aliana is 'hyper-competent' only because every other character is made worthless, and then manages to get nearly killed by the unskilled and useless Kylo Ren for a cheap dramatic beat that feels as contrived as everything else and makes Aliana look beyond incompetent.
And of course it doesn't even translate as 'Kylo has become a threat' because he's still treated like a little bitch who's only alive because Rey didn't explode his head immediately (which makes Rey look like an idiot because really, she should've been able to kill him in that fight pretty much immediately and not have to choose between vengeance or Aliana at all), so it's just this one off insance of the universe warping to serve the needs of the narrative because Lily, for how terrible a writer she is, knows that there are certain beats that should still be hit and just kind of... makes them happen, whether they make sense or not.
