Which is the worst at handling story arcs? Or can you think of another show worse than all three?

Which is the worst at handling story arcs? Or can you think of another show worse than all three?

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Steven Universe is great at it.
SP and Adventure time are ok at it. None of them are bad at it.

this

Gravity Falls

>Steven Universe is great at it.

And yet absolutely fucking horrid at producing a satisfying payoff. I actually can't think of a good one they've done off the top of my head.

>Steven: Shoving arcs on a shelf for later basically counts as being resolved
>South Park: We plan our arcs one week at a time
>Adventure Time: As long as it doesn't interfere with status quo!

What makes a story arc bad?

SU is good when it actually does an arc
It just doesn't do it often
It's like one arc crammed into 3 consecutive episodes, then 100 more episodes of filler

South Park is fine for a comedy show, the ultra-fast production rate means that sometimes they get fucked by reality. Like Trump actually winning

Adventure Time has no consequences and has a major problem sucking the status quo cock
But at least do story arcs more often

Dragon Ball

The Bismuth arc had a good end

>"arc"
>22-minute episode
>"arc"

To be fair, it did get mild foreshadowing in an earlier episode.

SU fans like to use anime terms where they clearly don't apply.

ehh, south parks last season turned out good. this season was shit

steven universe has created a universe but its super fucking deluded.

adventure time, at this latest season, has given up the grand story it created.

i wanna give it to SU because of house ideological and polar it is. its just irritating to watch

>Fucked by reality.

He's back for revenge.

SU has bad pacing and puts zero to little stress on what should be dramatic moments. What saves it is when they do decide to make shit dramatic and focus on the plot does it REALLY good.

SP suffered from a case of egotism and counting their eggs before hatching. They put all their faith in the plot on real world events going exactly their way and when it didn't it made the entire arc fumble as a whole.

AT I find to be the worst by far because they're are no writers but just storyboarders doing their own thing and it shows. There is no teamwork or thinking what's best for the show, everyone does whatever they feel like it and if someone comes up with a cool arc then tough luck, most of the other storyboarders don't want to do it or have different ideas of how it should go so in the end it all becomes a jumbled mess that leads to nothing.

SU has a good arc continuity but a horrible way to end it, and the cluster arc is a big proof

It was shown in the background of an environment and Steven didn't even acknowledge it. Hell, supposedly it's the same Bismuth that shows up in Lapis' flashback but they never even bother having her meet her to resolve that tension. She may as well never have shown up as a background object because she came and went super fast. There was no build up other than fanbase speculation.

But the cluster arc ended in the best way it could. Actually just destroying the thing would have been much lamer.

>SU has a good arc continuity but a horrible way to end it, and the cluster arc is a big proof
I'm not sure I'd even say that since the pacing is kind of iffy once you think about it.
>There's a giant monster slowly growing inside Earth ready to destroy the planet from the inside!
>Lets go build giant robots and have a lesson about racism instead
I think SU is just really great at introducing ideas but doesn't care much about developing them to their full potential.

>Steven faints from his pussyness feelings.
>Peridot starts giving up hope.
>Remembrances from Peridot's incompetence or some shit.
>Peridot decides to keep trying for the Earth.
>Steven keeps rolling in the floor because his autistic breakdown.
>Peridot finds a weak spot.
>With the remaining parts of the drill, Peridot destroys the Cluster by making it explode.
>Steven wakes up and starts screaming and telling Peridot off, for what she did.
>All the gem shards start erupting from the hole and scatter in different places.
>The eruption also brought back the drill to the barn.
>The crystal gems arrived.
>>What have you done
>Steven tells the gems that it was Peridot's fault and how there were better ways to finish with the Cluster issue.
>>But that's what you told me to do.
>Gems start blaming Peridot for everything.
>Peridot is done with the Gems' shit.
>She insults the crystal gems and go away crying inside the drill.
>Peridot becomes a villain again.

Then people would have complained that her redemption arc was too fast.

>Steven faints from his pussyness feelings.
kek

The Venture Bros

None of the shows in the OP had good arcs to begin with, but VB had many potentially phenomenal ones that were dropped like garbage on the side of the road.

I'm not bitter

Adventure time handles their arcs really slowly, but it does't drop them as many say. I'm not sure what people are expecting from AT quite honestly.

Which arcs have they dropped? I've enjoyed what they've done.

Out of all three South Park is by far the only decent show

You could say the same for the actual show

South Park. For as bad as AT and SU are at least they're structurally sound and more than one thing happens.

South Park is probably worse than the Simpsons now.

While I love all three I think that SU and AT are much better with character arcs than they are with really plot stuff.

Yeah, but that's not really what OP asked.

No, bubbling itself wasn't the problem. It was how damn easy it was. They spend 2/3 of the episode sitting in a drill with only one minor inconvenience along the way, then Steven accidentally wakes up in its mind and talks it down without saying or doing anything particularly insightful.

Hell, all it would have taken to fix it is something like:
>a few scenes of Steven talking to someone he doesn't recognize in his dreams in past episodes (the beginning of The Answer would have been a great time)
>the voice in his dreams (maybe the audience can't hear it and can only infer what it's saying by Steven's response) presents some kind of unheard dilemma that Steven doesn't have an answer for
>Steven's conversation with Peridot on the way down implies that he's indirectly asking for her advice on it. Peridot just asserts that everyone is bound by what they were made for and Steven is uncomfortable with that answer
>when Steven sees the Cluster, it finally clicks who the voice was and Steven insists on trying to "talk" to it again, much to Peridot's disdain
>when Steven gets inside, we finally hear what it's been saying in past episodes. It just talks about how it needs to be born and such, like it does in the episode we got
>Steven briefly considers accepting what Peridot was saying a few minutes ago, before realizing that the Crystal Gems, and even Peridot, were able to break out of their "roles" with help from others
>Steven insists that there are millions of them all supporting each other, so they can fight the urge to form together and pleads with them to
>then it bubbles itself

There. Same episode, but with better buildup and an ending that ties into the themes of the barn episodes.

That's legitimately pretty good man, nice.

Certainly better than what we got. Having the cluster bubble itself is a nice touch.

youtube.com/watch?v=bV1gbBhZHW8&t=281s
This guy pretty much nails why Season 19 worked and Season 20 didn't.

THE FUCKING ORB

Pacing is fine, CN's release schedule just fucks it up.

Marathoning each season after it airs I've come to realize that the pacing on Steven is great as written out, but CN's "five episodes in one week, then nothing for four months" schedule kills it.

Nice edgy fanfic. When does Shadow the Hedgehog show up?

SU's pacing is ruined by the garbage scheduling and 15 minute run time

South Park's is bad because it takes away from the actual jokes of the show and runs the theme into the ground.

AT is just drawn out too long. The series could have ended at multiple points now yet we have more seasons with islands. Just make up your mind on what you want to do and do it.

I dunno, it's one of those "the journey is what matters" kind of arcs where along the way, we learned:
>The birth of The Guild
>Kano finally spoke and was hinted at being the one who killed Jonas
>Got a tiny bit more insight to the ancestors of the Venture Family, Phantom Limb, etc.
>Learned why Brock, a top-A agent, was assigned to a low-tier, hack protagonist.
>Ended up jumpstarting the development of Brock leaving the Venture family for awhile and giving Hatred a chance at redemption. Brock leaving also segued into Hank wanting to be more of rebel and a nice introduction to SPHINX which was a whole other arc entirely.

Like, the Orb itself is basically a MacGuffin. Nothing it did would have been as important as knowing why things like the Guild are in place.

It's a good episode but let's be honest, it mostly exists just to serve as a metaphor for some of the extremist rhetoric in BLM and to acknowledge that it's wrong.[spoilers]the tumblr tears were delicious[/spoiler]

While I agree with the points you made, the entire build up and final moment made me unbelievably mad. For something that has so many plot threads hanging from it the fact that it's used as a anti-humor punchline just fails and left me feeling hollow.

Steven Universe is usually pretty good but the resolution to the Cluster "arc" was so bad it almost made me decide to stop watching entirely. Maybe it will come into play later and we'll get a more satisfying conclusion but wow was it bad.

>you think a Steven Universe episode was about Black Lives Matter

Ha ha, yeah, dude. Also the episode where he really wants to eat a donut first thing in the morning was about 9/11. It must be, it had an airplane in it! And the episode where he helps that girl deliver pizzas was secretly about abortion.

>Random user came up with a better arcing plot for the Cluster than a team of professionals at a studio

And this right here is why it's important for a showrunner to have more than a single show's worth of experience before getting their own cartoon. So they can actually improve as writers and not just get pat on the back for the way they write when they graduate college and then coated all their life to think that everything they touch is Emmy-worthy stories.

>It's a good episode
No it wasn't, that episode proved su writers can't write a decent episode even when they have a full 22 mins. It follows the same issues a majority of their eps have by being 95% intro 5% conflict and resolution

>what is symbolism

You're honestly an idiot if you don't think they were at least drawing some parallels there or if you can't see where I'm coming from.

It seems much more likely that it's a coincidence than an intentional parallel. Stories of war and conflict tend to ask questions of "what's going too far?" and we just happen to have that going on irl as well.

Possibly and I could certainly accept that. I did still interpret it that way before I saw tumblr make the comparison but yeah now that I think about it, it does seem like more of a general message. I guess the fact that it came out now and the fact that everything starts and finishes in the same episode made me think it was specifically trying to address that.

I can kind of see that but I don't really think that it's been resolved yet. It sort of came up with it coming out that Rose was willing to kill even if she wasn't going all murder crazy like Bismuth was. I think it'll come up again when they actually have to start fighting with the diamonds (I think/hope Steven will learn a hard lesson that you can't befriend everyone).

no you couldn't, but nice try fuckboy

SU: Great use of arcs, they actually commit to them. Yea, usually throw some other story that doesn't have to do shit with it(TA/DrillArc) but that's fine.
AT: I love AT but sadly, they fuckup way too much their arcs. Always raising the bar too high to fuckin drop it from space to hell. (Martin's/Orgalorg's/TheComet).