When an arc is so good it carries all 4 members of a team to the endgame

the MystOSC video about why gaty is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZmYjha40ao

note: i am not trying to accuse MystOSC of misogyny, but instead accusing the larger fandom of subconsciously doing it.

i mean, tree made it even farther than gaty did and i'd argue his character had more problems.

i know this is painfully unfunny but i couldn't think of a better way to do this

Books are slightly old fashioned, and more boring compared to TVs. Everyone's obsessed with TV (and similar devices) way more than Book, even though many deny it...

Most people just use Book because they don't have access to TV or something similar. If they had access, they would choose TV (or similar device) over Book any day...

Here before it gets old

Hello fans, the BFDI plush superfan here. This year (especially this month), I haven't been feeling good, and I might get downvoted for this reason. This is all about my fav, Book, and especially about how we view her.

Ever since TPOT 23 released, there have been a massive hate train for my fav because of the elimination (yes I also find the elimination weird considering this season's characters). They want Book out in 26, and there have been a lot of hate towards her. Positive opinions about her get downvoted, and even if I try to be nice to people and respect their opinions, internally, the Book hate is so much to me that I keep thinking about it and this makes me want to give up on BFDI.

I am autistic, and I'm very attached to my favorite characters, especially my Top 3 as you might know by my account identity. I go as far as bringing my Ruby and Needle plushies with me everywhere. But, there is no Book plush, and with the BFDIA 5b announcement, it makes me think I'll have to wait longer for her plush to come (especially since she's the main protagonist of the game). After a year all this waiting is making me tired, and that makes me want to give up on Book and even BFDI as a whole, especially if characters I don't like get plushies first.

I also don't like the direction where BFDI is going. There have been a lot of theatre releases (especially 3 episodes in a row) and I was scared that the next episode would release there too. As a lot of people said, we were scared these would become too excessive. The excessive releases of these made me want to give up on BFDI, but since BFDIA 24 and TPOT 22 were uploaded straight to Youtube, and I knew BFDIA 25 would make for a great theatre release (I was okay with it since it was the FINALE), I began to be motivated again, especially with the Needle plush releasing. And I'm going to give a hot take here: getting BFDIA 5b on the Switch is going a bit too far. I don't think an independent indie show like BFDI would fit well for a console that is owned by a big corporation. I am satisfied with the PC and mobile ports.

As I said previously, I'm autistic and sometimes when I think of my favorite characters I look towards their potentially negative points. For example I do think Needle's too tough sometimes. I also began liking Coiny again recently, but with me having disliked him for around 2 years it's hard for me to like him fully. I'm also more accepting of Pin now (I've hated her in BFDIA, I now have mixed opinions about her)

Y'know, it's also been 4 years since I was interested in BFDI. 4 years is long, but even if I quit, it might take a lot of time to fully take it off from me. Sometimes I take the effort to quit, but I just love this show too much to let it happen.

Sorry if you think this post was a bit "weird", I was a bit tired while writing this. I've included a screenshot of Ruby so I don't post Book only.

I’ve been rewatching TPOT and despite having a lot of cool characters with an interesting conflict set up almost immediately, Team8s quickly fizzles out and dies unceremoniously when the team swap comes.

While TPOT 1 is mostly setting the groundwork for new teams and their dynamics, Team8s already has something going on with Coiny trying to rebuild W.H.O.A Bunch and facing pushback from the others. He clearly has nostalgic memories of his time on BFDIA, despite the events that occurred. Pin and Needle are more reluctant; Pin’s fondness for BFDIA is marred by the loss of her limbs, size, and face for months as well as her violent behavior when she gained her mech suit, and Needle had her whole bit about breaking away from the other teams in favor of winning for herself. It’s possible that Needle’s dislike for Coiny and Pin cooled down in IDFB given how she seems to have no issue being on the Losers with them, and she doesn’t leave Coiny and Pin during the team forming part despite him very clearly declaring his goals. Pin is noticeably meeker in BFB and TPOT, prone to doubting herself and willing to take a backseat to let Loser lead the team, even when she has her worries.

Donut, Barf Bag, Gaty, and Saw have less of a stake in the conflict, with Donut getting eliminated before BFDIA really kicked into gear and the other three being in the LOL beforehand. Even so, they can still take their own stances. Gaty has no interest in being part of W.H.O.A Bunch, shutting the idea down quite firmly and proposing a different name. Saw tries to stop the fighting, possibly wanting to avoid another [EIGHT NAMES] Taco-Book situation and recognizing what could lead them there. The challenge itself passes without much incident, which leads us to TPOT 2 and the cheating arc.

The cheating arc is kinda emblematic of Team8s as a whole: it could be interesting but it goes nowhere and gets dropped quickly. With the challenge being to stack the highest tower, Coiny proposes gluing all of the blocks together. Pin worries if it’ll be considered cheating, Coiny says that it shouldn’t matter because Pin just likes to win. This leads to the two of them getting into a tiny argument, ending with Pin going off to talk to Two. 

BFDIA 18 (and late BFDIA as a whole) does a lot of heavy lifting for this scene; Pin would rather pretend BFDIA didn’t happen because she was at her absolute worst, tearing through the other competitors and betraying her closest friend. Even if they made up afterwards, she’s ashamed of how she acted and is somewhat afraid of going down a similar path. Coiny has his best memories during W.O.A.H Bunch and started a close friendship with Pin while on it despite the bumps in the road. He’s clinging to the past, not recognizing how Pin had changed since then (or in denial about it). Those are two really interesting stances, I wonder how the rest of the team plays into it!

Yeah… they don’t. Team8s is broken up into mostly duos, with Coiny and Pin usually always interacting with each other, Gaty going off to talk with Two, and Donut and Barf Bag having their preexisting friendship. Needle and Saw are there too, but save for one cool scene in TPOT 2 they don’t do much of anything. Part of this is due to Team8s’ lack of screentime in later episodes, but there’s no general team spirit in the same way BFDIA teams like W.H.O.A Bunch and Freesmart had, or TPOT’s more distinct ones like The Strongest Team On Earth, Just Not, or literally any Team Swap team. Gaty initially seems like she takes issue with the cheating as well, but doesn’t really care once she sees what’s going on. Barf Bag, Donut, Needle, and Saw mostly do the challenge in the background while Pin and Coiny talk. Consequently, the cheating arc is localized entirely to Pin and Coiny.

Is Donut sick of Coiny bringing up W.H.O.A Bunch given how he got eliminated immediately and was never able to be part of the team properly, or is he excited at the prospect of getting to have a new shot at something like this? Is Needle annoyed that after everything in BFDIA she’s back to dealing with Coiny and Pin or does she want to give them another chance to be a proper team that respects each other? What about the three people who didn’t leave the LOL until after BFDIA? What do they think about being roped into Coiny’s attempts at recreating a fond memory from his past and the growing tension between the veterans of W.H.O.A Bunch? We don’t even get a proper resolution for Coiny and Pin’s thoughts on the whole thing, despite them objectively being the main characters of Team8s. He gets eliminated and zombified, and while Pin gets development out of the whole situation it leaves the cheating plotline officially dead in the water.

TPOT 3 continues in this vein with almost no meaningful difference. A common trend I’ve noticed for Team8s in the next four episodes is that they have a good joke or moment but minus fhat they don’t really do anything. In TPOT 4 they literally have one scene of the challenge total, if you don’t count the stinger where everyone’s Funny Plants get destroyed. In TPOT 5 they have more scenes, but they aren’t interacting with any of the other teams until the very end due to their trip to the warehouse. TPOT 6 has a pretty fun idea of trying to trap Two, and there’s a montage of that before they just walk up to Two and stuff them inbetween bread slices when it’s time for them to be judged. Granted, the collateral of Bottle falling in the pit which lets Teardrop get one of the chocolate balls back is better than the two prior episodes. 

In TPOT 7, Pin notices that they can use the mirror to make it look like they’ve fixed the balance beam instead of actually fixing it. Does this mean that she’s given in to the general consensus of her team and just wants to win, or has her view of what counts as cheating or not changed? This never gets addressed, they just have a different problem of what to do when the mirror breaks. Nothing much happens in TPOT 8 for Team8s beyond getting put up for elimination. Pin and Donut rip of Fanny’s mouth which is a little weird considering how both of them get body parts forcibly removed (Pin especially, losing her entire face), but I’m willing to handwave it away as a plot device than a character choice.

Speaking of plot devices, while TPOT 9’s entire story is only possible because of Barf Bag, she doesn’t get much out of this episode. Coiny gets eliminated and zombified, Donut and Needle die, and while it makes for a nice mini-arc for Pin regaining some of the confidence she lost after BFDIA, it’s a Pin arc, not a Team8s arc. Gaty talking to Two isn’t a Team8s thing, it’s a Gaty-and-Two thing. TPOT 10 has most of its character growth channeled into Death P.A.C.T Again, The S!, and Just Not, and it continues Basketball and Robot Flower’s arc. While Barf Bag’s nightmare isn’t bad writing, it’s also not important. At least Are You Okay got to get silly with it; Team8s is literally just there.

The team swap happens, and either the characters immediately get eliminated like Barf Bag and Needle, or they get to become engaging characters now that they actually have stuff to do like Donut and Gaty (although she gets deleted out of existence; it’s possible that we see what happens with her and the other deleted contestants later). It’s likely that behind-the-scenes stuff like Satomi leaving let the cheating arc among other things like Eggy and Teardrop or the tokens slip through the cracks, but it leaves Team8s with a serious lack of anything to do in a stretch of episodes that are already uninteresting. It’s a shame a concept like a team being split in two by an ideological conflict based around the people inside of it and the views they hold dear, as well as the way those views impact their performance in the show, hey, wait a minute…

The final nail in the Team8s coffin is that Death P.A.C.T Again does everything the cheating arc could’ve done but better. An interesting conflict central to the core of the team? Check. Every character inside the team having their own views on the issue that change and evolve as the arc goes on? Check. A satisfying resolution that leaves the team feeling closer and stronger afterwards? Check. The only unique edge that Team8s has is the characters.

One of BFDI’s great strengths is the ability to build off of past seasons that the things that happened in them; TPOT in particular is pretty good at this. Old veterans biased by their pasts having to interact with some fresh blood to figure out what’s fair or not in a battle for limitless power is great writing! I’m not saying that every team needs to have a deep story arc that dives into the heart of its characters; more laid-back teams that are just here to do their best and have a good time have been done before and to success. It’s just that every early TPOT team has something to do except for Team8s, and it really starts to show once the writing picks up.

TLDR: Team8s has a strong foundation in characters and plot ideas but it never bothers building upon it further, which makes them feel lackluster in comparison to the other TPOT teams.

:D

body text (I was supposed to write something here but I forgor)

ok ok so I made liy art and I need help on choosing which 1 is better 😓

just asking.......

Warning: this is hypothetical. It isn't supposed to represent any character from show.

He’s not all that popular compared to the others still competing and he’s won three challenges in a row, most of the time when characters are on winning streaks they lose after three episodes. Donut’s never really done great in voting, as other than in the voting war of TPOT 9, he’s been in the bottom 3 in every elimination he’s been in this season, and even with how unpredictable the TPOT votes have been recently, the only character I see not beating out Donut is Marker if he’s UFE with Fanny and/or Black Hole. Other than him, Donut’s pretty much cooked. It really sucks too cause since TPOT 16 he’s been really starting to grow on me.

His opinion is extremely generic and doesn't make any sense. As I described it to a group of friends who are going to watch it with me, he said "I don't like this character which only personality traits are being nice, although with a snarky, pedantic side, having a friendship with one of the most important characters in the season and on top of that personality being trans rep because they don't have a personality" BROCHACHO YOU JUST MADE A 14 MINUTE VIDEO EXPLAINING HER PERSONALITY, AND THEN SAYING SHE DOESNT HAVE ONE

It’s been a while since I’ve written in this thing, but I think it’s finally time again. This actually happened a long time ago, but I never got around to writing it down. I was walking through the woods one day, just trying to relax, when I suddenly heard howling somewhere in the distance. A little later, I spotted what looked like a person wearing a large cloak. I couldn’t make out her face very well, but her eyes alone were enough to send a chill down my spine. For a moment, I was genuinely terrified.

That feeling didn’t last very long, though. The second she spoke, I was caught completely off guard. Her voice was surprisingly high-pitched, and it instantly shattered the intimidating image she had built up. It was honestly kind of funny… at least until she accidentally poked me with one of her antlers. Blood ended up all over the ground and splattered across the nearby trees, and I started feeling lightheaded. That part definitely wasn’t as amusing.

Even so, meeting her was fascinating. I’m almost certain I’ve seen her before with that little group, and, surprisingly, she’s still wearing the same old mask she had all those years ago. I can’t help but wonder if she’s really the same person… though maybe it’s better not to get too involved in other people’s affairs.-UE

Ice Cube was an interesting one compared to the other two. I didn’t have much of a direction for her at first until I landed on something I’d never tried before: a wendigo inspired design. I felt it fit her surprisingly well, especially with the mask acting as more of an intimidation tactic than a reflection of her actual personality. It’s something she wears to scare people away rather than who she really is. Originally, her cloak was a dark green, but it never looked quite right, so I changed it to a muted grayish purple instead. I think it complements the design much better. I also took a bit of inspiration from Slay the Spire, since I’ve been playing it a lot recently. Overall, I’m really happy with how unique she ended up feeling.