fencecollapsed:

An Expanded Criticism of Perky’s Buds

Tomorrow is Nightmare Time day! I’m about to get negative but I’m gonna try to do it in a reasonable, genuine way, and then I’ll stop talking about it I promise!

If you follow me you know I don’t like Perky’s Buds very much. I think it’s the weakest Hatchetfield story overall. I don’t care who does like it, to each their own and good for you, enjoying things is great! There’s stuff in there I like, too. I’m not gonna say you’re wrong for liking it, not at all.

But seriously, once it goes live tomorrow, if I see more people making all critique of it out to be a feminist or shipping issue I will lose my fucking mind and that’s a promise. Thankfully this is a pretty small fanbase so I haven’t seen a ton of this, but I’ve seen enough to irritate me, and it’s enough to write this post to try and genuinely discuss it so. I hope y'all will hear me out.

The reflex to be defensive of a woman-led story that doesn’t feature her love interest is a fair one. It’s easy to see paulkins fans taking issue with Emma’s character in PB, or having been bummed that Paul didn’t make an appearance, and take it in bad faith. Baseline critiques don’t always expand on that kind of thing, it’s easy to see it as bitter shippers who wish Paul was around and don’t think Emma can hold her own in a story without him. I’m not gonna say there aren’t people like that, maybe there are. And yeah, that’s dumb. If your only problem with PB is that Paul wasn’t there, and thus there was no paulkins, that’s an issue. Think on that.

However, as someone interested in genuine analysis and critique, who took the time to think about why I didn’t enjoy Perky’s Buds and discuss it with multiple people, I want to make a genuine argument and explain what I and others really take issue with when it comes to Emma’s character in this story. It’s not about Paul. Emma is fully capable of carrying a story on her own, and Paul’s presence wouldn’t have made this story or Emma’s portrayal in it any better. I’ve talked to people who like Emma and don’t like paulkins who agree that PB is a bad story, and a bad Emma story particularly. It’s really not a shipping thing.

I’m not gonna talk much about the actual story writing here, because although I didn’t really like the story as a whole either, I find those things more preference based. I’m generally not a fan of The Animals Are Evil type stories, I wasn’t entertained by the nighthawks as villains, I would’ve preferred a story with the Metzgers as the central threat. A story just like this with a different lead probably wouldn’t appeal to me regardless. Those are all me things, and I don’t particularly care about any of that in comparison to what I’m actually going to discuss.

The story itself isn’t the real problem, the lore isn’t the problem, the other characters aren’t really the problem, and Paul being gone isn’t the problem.

Emma’s wasted potential is. Hear me out.

Keep reading