Meme: Least Favorite Canon Moments!

[dollpocalypse]

So it looks like we last did this one in November, but I only decided I was looking for this one, like, 60 posts back in the meme tag, and I'm too lazy to go back and check. So let's go with that!

So, from dirtiest_skank:

Give us your top five, if you can come up with that many, moments that make you cringe in your fandom. Whether it's bad writing, or character massacre, or just some beautifully executed but OMG PAINFUL scenes, rant about your canon here! Everyone's got a story where they bitch out the producers of their favorites. Give us yours.

Please assume spoilers for all these fandoms, but as a courtesy to everyone else, don't discuss anything that had its finale like, last night or anything. :)

Wheee!

Comments

[gladigotburned.livejournal.com]

You know, this feels weird to say but I honestly can't think of one moment from this canon that I don't love. Huh.

[dollpocalypse]

Well, that's because your canon is perfect. Therefore the correct answer is "the ending." Except no, because the ending is amazing. SO.

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

War Games. THAT IS ALL.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.

[not_a_whiner]

Okay, I just got home and so I will add these as I think of them.

But really, you can't start a list of Mass Effect don'ts without mentioning the ending to Mass Effect 3 (there's rumors of another game in the series now so I'm not calling it THE ENDING anymore). I'm personally not a huge hater of the ending, but I definitely agree that it could have been a lot better (especially prior to the Extended Cut).

Because whoever decided that the ending of a trilogy that prided itself on allowing you to steer the storyline according to your own whims should not have had three essentially similar four-minute endings with absolutely nothing in the way of reflecting the player's journey down to the end. The Extended Cut fixed a lot of it for me, but it still stands firmly as a case of 'you capped off one of gaming's greatest epics with that?' - a pillar of wasted potential.

And also everything leading up to said ending made me cry great big snottery tears three times over, because apparently not even multiple replays can numb you to the sheer, balls-kicking boggling WOE of saying goodbye to all of these characters and asldkfjsadlkfjsdavxnm,cvsdfaewroiuearskflj.

Ahem. Just some (extremely spoilery) examples...

[not_a_whiner]

Soooo many of the side-missions to Mass Effect 1. I realize they were trying to flesh out the ME universe by giving you tons of stuff to do left and right that threw a light on various parts of said universe (the biotic rebellion, Cerberus, proto-EDI on Luna) but the levels were repetitive and the writing was noticeably lacking. They could've spent that time and energy on something else - I know I skip through those missions every time I play the game now.

(Really, the combat system in ME1 in general. It's that I think actually putting in the effort now would be insane, but I do sympathize with the people who want to see ME1 redone in ME2 and ME3's game engine)

The romances in ME1. Sure, my two favorite romances (Liara and Kaidan) have their roots in this game, but you literally only had to talk to the designated possible love interests more than once to get randomly locked into the romance storyline, which made very little sense and made things get pretty awkward pretty quick.

(This is actually one of the reasons that I like that you can't romance Kaidan as DudeShep until the last game, because at least they actually had a believable span of time to get to know each other and also I just have a thing for UST storylines. Ahem.)

[not_a_whiner]

More in the category 'that kind of sucked': the way the Rachni were handled in the end, which I do get, but it's kind of lame that the only difference you make by choosing one way or the other is the gain or loss of war asset points and your choice in creepy-euuugh or creepy-awww dialogue.

Likewise saving or ditching the Collector Base. I'm also not terribly fond of the Arrival DLC, which is pretty much the only one I haven't replayed (well, that and Pinnacle Station, but Pinnacle Station isn't really DLC, it's a freaking training simulator)-- not for any particular reason besides that it's just underwhelming, for all that Shepard does terrible things in it.

In the category 'so beautiful that it hurt', asfsdfjdsf did the Fall of Thessia get to me. Especially Shepard and the asari councillor right afterwards. I cried buckets.

And then there was Mordin's last appearance in Mass Effect 3 and its aldskfjdafkdsjfcnvxcmnsdmfaslkdfjklajfkldfj askfdjlk ldkfjaf klj--

Okay, you know what, I'm going to stop. Basically if you've played the previous two installments and you're about to start this one, do not under any circumstance go in without tissues. Okay? Okay.

[suitably_heroic]

Oh, god. While I love this game and its story, at this point in the cycle, about half the praise should go to the fine folks who went back, combed through the archives, and put all the stuff that the devs had to leave unfinished back into the game. (I put the blame for the 'unfinished' thing squarely on LucasArts' shoulder for attempting to rush the game out the door)

The original KotOR2 was a heavily mutilated masterpiece - because of the rushing a lot of important plot and characterization stuff was kept out of the game; if you play it vanilla, it's often incoherent in places, and it has an ending so abrupt it is about twenty times as terrible as Mass Effect's - because there really isn't one. You beat the bad guy, the bad guy tells you what will become of your friends, and then the game just ends.

Now, the ending's still pretty abrupt (I will never stop being frustrated about the fact that the only real epilogue we've got is Kreia making vague statements about the future of all the characters involved plus one firm statement that they will restore the Jedi-- Atton literally gets nothing more than a "Oh god I can't even TELL but he's Atton so he'll probably be the only one of you who lives past age forty because while he's an idiot the Force really f'ing loves him". And Revan, the terrible terrible book that gave the Exile all the personality of a sheet of paper.) but the game itself is a whole lot better.

[heromaniac]

I have two for Momoko:

1. Episode one, part one. It is universally recognized as the WORST ever, and anyone who cares about you will warn you never to watch it. It will turn off ANY one even remotely interested in the show and we have NO idea why they did it. it messes up canon and is just stupid and asinine.

2. THE ENTIRE ENGLISH DUB. They messed it all up while trying to merge the original Powerpuff Girls with the Z girls. And they dumbed down the series EVEN MORE to make it suitable for English audiences... etc etc. I mean, I dislike dubs in the first place, but, man...

Oh, and can I add in ALL THE FANFIC EVER? Apparently there is a large faction of the audience that ships Momoko and her genetic clone Brick. And I just recently found a contingency of Momoko/Yugi fans. Yes, from Yugi-oh. I just... I don't even... *flails*

[ultron_junior]

1. Terry Moore. I agree that Moore is a gifted comics writer and creator of characters. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, he never quite grokked Runaways: Under his scripts, Molly got largely one-note and brattish, Victor lost most of his sense of humor, Klara lost whatever personality Whedon had been trying to give her, and Chase got especially dumb. It didn't help that Moore didn’t seem particularly interested in continuing certain storylines launched by Whedon or Vaughan, or that the artist he was paired with for most of his run used an exaggerated style I find frankly ugly. Kathryn Immonen was able to repair some of the damage in her third volume, but by that time the magic was gone and the comic was swiftly cancelled.

2. Daken. The plot was next to impossible to understand for an outsider reading just for the Runaways appearance (and apparently not much more logical to Marvel experts, I hear), and the cameo wasn't even especially well-written. A pox on it.

3. Rock zombies. Gets broken out from “Moore in general” because … zombies, man. Zombies somehow created through plastic surgery and audio suggestion. The hell? It was just dumb, and I have a high tolerance for fantasy dumbness.

4. I don’t have an issue with the broad shape of Nico/Victor. I would have loved for them to stay together because they’re basically my two favorite people on the team, but I feel like the groundwork was laid to establish they should have stayed just friends from the get-go. But Nico’s decision to give up and basically hand Victor over to Lillie – a character who lives in 1907 -- seemed, at best, rushed and weakly justified. The Lillie thing also made Vic a cheater, which I don’t find particularly in character given what a goody-goody he can be about everything else.

5. Iron Man. The team goes through hell, basically, and comes back to their hostel exhausted to find Iron Man and a team of armed SHIELD back-up waiting for them. Exciting! What’s going to happen?

Your guess is as good as mine, because the next we see is some time later, in New York, and all we ever hear about what went down with Iron Man is that it was a bad day.

Well, fine.

[selfhelphero]

Focusing specifically on Young Avengers I... honestly have no complaints that I can think of. :D

[so_hawkward]

If we just stick to the movie... okay, so I'm quite fond of Hawkeye's storyline in The Avengers because, well, I'm a terrible person who loves mind control. BUT I am quite displeased that apparently Joss had a whoooole other storyline for him that got scrapped because there wasn't enough space for it, so we got the mind whammy instead, which cut Clint's screen time down to 12 minutes. :( That's really my big, sole complaint.

[notconflicted]

It ended.

That's it. My canon's perfect.

[wwiii]

That it wasn't actually a three minute short about Warren flying around without a shirt on. :(

[sensethevisions]

Christy and Billie. I hated Billie.

[richieryan.livejournal.com]

That time Richie DIED because Duncan was hallucinating. D:

And also the entire Ahriman storyline.

Also every season 6 episode except the Methos&Joe hour and the finale. Those can stay. The rest were pretty much awful.

I mean, there were some terrible episodes other seasons but in the usual "this is campy syndicated TV" sort of way and that's fine and to be expected. But Ahriman/Richie's death/season 6 are just unforgivable.

[nonelikemesince.livejournal.com]

I actually kind of hate the entire Centerpoint Station plot I just did, starting from way back in the Corellian Trilogy during the Bantam EU era.

I mean, I do love how it culminated in the rift between Anakin and Jacen, and how that defined their respective approaches to the Force from that point on. Just the whole thing with the station only responding to him, because he activated it for the first time when he was eight? That's a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit ridiculous and makes me sigh.

Mostly, though, I'm never going to forgive them for Thrackan Sal-Solo, because CLEARLY, WHAT THE EU WAS MISSING WAS HAN SOLO'S EVIL LOOKALIKE COUSIN. Seriously?

[hatesmoststuff.livejournal.com]

Aaah, you know, anything I complain about regarding Parks and Rec is just gonna be nitpicky, but I couldn't just not ping into my own meme, so I'm gonna try.

- The first season is just pretty weak in general. Leslie's a little too naive and bubbly to be real, Andy's less good-hearted and more of a douche, Ron somewhat bizarrely gives the impression that he does things, and Mark is just... Mark. The writing improves a lot later on, though, and hits its stride around season three when Chris and Ben show up. (Guess who I love. Spoilers: it's Chris and Ben.)

- The show sometimes forgets that one thing it's really good at is making its characters funny without making people dislike them? I am consistently annoyed by shows that have to make their characters terrible people to get laughs, so I have to sigh when P&R pulls something like, say, bringing back Leslie's cop boyfriend from season one and wrecking his adorableness and making him psycho.

- Okay, I started a thing about how I'm not really a marriage person and therefore April and Andy's wedding was sigh-worthy, but it's April and Andy and they're awesome so never mind.

- THE LACK OF MORE MEGAN MULLALLY. GIMME MORE TAMMY II.

- Relatedly, I was not a huge fan of the Lucy Lawless character last week who was introduced as a love interest for Ron? Come on, they couldn't have made her more perfect-on-paper if they tried. BE A LITTLE MORE CREATIVE. ...I just really like Ron, okay.

Okay now I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel so I'll stop. I REALLY LIKE THIS SHOW.

[new-it-girl.livejournal.com]

Lucas taking Hanna out on a boat and being so creepy she fears for her life. It was awesome when she used an oar to knock his ass out of the boat. But then the payoff was really lame. All he wanted was to ask her to help him because of a gambling issue. He sure has a hilarious way of asking for help. Another case of making Lucas the big red herring.

Spencer accusing everyone of being 'A' and the other girls just blindly following along. Anytime she accuses anyone that pretty much guarantees that person is not 'A.'

The police being deeply stupid.

Aria/Ezra. I hate this pairing so much. It's sad because she's so much more likeable when she's away from him. Too bad she's mostly in scenes with him, ugh. Plus, they are so far removed from the main plot, unlike the boyfriends/girlfriends of the other girls. It's like a totally different show: The Stupid Life of Aria (tm someone at TWoP).