OK so I literally only slept 3 hours last night after watching the eps, and it was a shitty 3 hours, so apologies if anything is jumbled or incoherent. This post is about why Season 4 as a whole (at least with the character relationships overall, not just romance and not just Starco) feels to me like such a gigantic and unnecessary fundamental writing/focus shift compared to past seasons (especially 1 and 2, but also 3).

Curse was… obviously just a slap in the face, a full descent into “will-they-won’t-they” for no purpose other than dragging it out, since it CONFIRMED that Star and Marco have true mutual love for each other and basically directly stated to the audience in the dance that, no, this isn’t because of the curse, it’s genuine, but decided more love polyhedra and suspense and drama were needed. NOTE THAT I FULLY ADMIT AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEIR FEELINGS ARE REAL, THEIR DANCE HIGHLY AFFECTED ME, AND IT WAS A VERY STRONG EMOTIONAL MOMENT. I’m not trying to imply that it meant absolutely nothing, not at all, I’m more talking about its purpose in the narrative than the emotions it contained as an isolated scene when I say “it had no purpose other than to drag things out.” Not sure exactly where we go from here, but I know Starco’s still endgame, and I also know that the route there is gonna be at least some level of disappointment to me. No way around that, but I think it’s worth looking at the rest of the season to dig into what just feels different in a bad way, because it’s really not just Curse. I feel like half the fandom is freaking out simply over just the fact that they claimed they didn’t feel anything anymore, and worrying about the suspense and drama over whether Starco would still happen at all, but that reaction is the goal of will-they-won’t-they, it’s why it works and why so few stories bother going beyond it, and I hate that. The point I want to tackle and criticize isn’t “I’m worried Starco won’t happen!” but rather a look at the overall handling of characters and relationships in the show narratively.

Let’s start with a look back on earlier seasons. I should hope that anyone could agree watching the first 2 seasons that Star and Marco’s relationship was very strongly built on a foundation of emotional intimacy, honesty, supporting each other and understanding each other, etc. Even if you’re not a Starco shipper, even if you’re anti-Starco as a couple and see them as entirely platonic, this much at least should hopefully be agreeable to everyone, because it’s like 80% of what the show contained until the middle of S2 actually got some plot going. Once we get into season 3, it becomes a lot more contentious among the fans, but there’s still a lot of this same stuff. Yes, Star and Marco spend less screentime together, but the majority of moments they share feel special, and have a strong emotional core with moments between them. Toffee, Lint Catcher, Sweet Dreams (sort of), Night Life, Deep Dive, Marco Jr., Booth Buddies, Divide/Conquer - every single one of these had a clear focus on why Star and Marco’s relationship, specifically, was important and special to them, and what made them work so well as a pair. Not just “they go on an adventure together to accomplish a goal.” Granted, not EVERY single episode in any season was like this, all three of the past seasons did have episodes that were just the basic adventure, but this was still an overall important part of the pacing of the show even if not omnipresent. And yes, absolutely, other characters had meaningful emotional moments and bonds with each other as well. Bonbon provided payoff on a genuine emotional honesty that Marco had been building up with Jackie in Sleepover and Naysaya, not just romance for romance’s sake but feeling like it had a purpose, it made total sense why Marco and Jackie had feelings for each other and why they did to some extent work together. Demoncism for Tom and Star was another such moment, capitalizing in some part on Star’s heartbreak, yes, but still serving as a turning point with a genuine purpose to both their characters as they tried to take steps forward as people first, and they bonded over that. Similarly, Is Another Mystery built off of Monster Bash for Tomstar and specifically Tom’s issues with caring about others. Things flowed as a whole across the season, even if not in a way that involved Star and Marco constantly on screen together.

Now let’s look at S4 as a whole thus far. As far as Starco is concerned… what moments like this have we had? When has their relationship been clearly special to them as a normal part of their day to day lives and not just in some epic WOW moment? I guess the end of Follies, and the hug in Ransomgram if you squint just a little bit, but even then, the actual emotional core of that episode really didn’t have anything to do with Star and Marco’s relationship with each other specifically. All their other episodes are just very basic “Star and Marco perform an activity for some episodic plot purpose” with no heart or soul put into their dynamic itself. Then we get to Curse, where apparently Marco’s feelings for Star are so strong that he’s constantly beside himself with emotion over them, and Star’s for Marco obvious enough that even dense as fuck Tom knows. In any past season, these things would’ve been firmly built up over the course of meaningful Star and Marco moments across a handful of segments leading up to it, so… why not now? We had a single tangential reference to it on Star’s end in Lake House Fever, and Marco saying how hard it’s been in Kelly’s World immediately beforehand, and that’s it. Not to mention that Marco apparently has budding feelings for Kelly (despite not having had any meaningful emotional moments with her Lava Lake Beach, a full season ago), after only one episode in Season 4. Bonbon had Sleepover and Naysaya for Jarco, Demoncism had Club Snubbed for Tomstar, what did Kelly’s World have? To me, right now, it feels like emotions/romance in teen relationships in the show 180′d overnight from a genuine part of their day to day lives and interactions that ebb and flow naturally and subtly to “le epic shipping drama with blushes and handholding to get people’s feely-weely uwuing to the max and ready to tune in for more,” and this feels like a HUGE departure from the storytelling method of literally everything before Season 4.

EDIT: Let’s not ignore Curse itself either, though. The idea of destiny vs free will, and Star and Marco choosing to be with each other on their own terms entirely is cool on paper. Issue is, LITERALLY NOTHING IN THE SHOW UP TO THIS POINT HAS GIVEN OFF THE IDEA THAT IT’S MAGICALLY FORCED. Many fans postulated it, but the show never brought it up as a problem to be handled later, and put explicit care into all their developments being entirely natural. The “Blood Moon Curse” was a problem with very little buildup in the narrative, created specifically to start an arc that as an isolated thing seems fine, but ends up just fucking with what they’d already developed and delays the outcome more and more.

Maybe, best case scenario, all of this is just kind of wonky pacing for no clear reason, the show is known to fuck that up even at its best, but the overall progression will still be kind of fine. Maybe we fairly quickly enter an arc where they try to live their new lives, free of feelings, and they allow themselves to get closer to each other without reservation because they think the feelings are gone and begin to find genuine joy and happiness in their relationship (as a result of the love which is still there, but the placebo effect that they think it’s gone makes them open themselves up to it after seasons of trying to hide from it). Maybe this results in Kellco not really going anywhere, with like one episode of them trying to make it work and failing because Marco’s heart still isn’t in it, and Tomstar also breaking up because they both finally accept that even the Blood Moon going away didn’t change anything, and we’re still set for a Big Moment somewhere around Cornonation-Beach Day to be Star and Marco fully accepting and recognizing their love, on their own terms, with every bit of denial and every obstacle behind them, giving us at the VERY least a handful of segments before the end to showcase some day-to-day canon Starco, show why it works for them and why it makes them so happy, and to show Tom (and Kelly too, maybe?) being OK with the situation and finding fulfillment in it themselves. Then the series finale could be the final push for Starco, from “our feelings are real and we want to pursue them without any doubts” to “I want to spend the rest of my life with you”. I’d still overall call this a lot of unnecessary drama and dragging, and still highly question everything about these first 8 episodes that I did, but I can’t deny there IS a symbolic/narrative benefit for Curse here. It could serve as an important milestone where Star and Marco finally put the heartbreak and hurt their feelings cause behind them once and for all, which is sort of what a lot of people thought it would be anyway, and if things still move forward quickly as part of an arc then it would still perhaps accomplish something meaningful and not just dragging for drama.

Or maybe the rest of the season will largely follow the pattern of what we’ve had thus far, with everything through Cornonation being almost devoid of anything special in relationships, just showing characters interacting normally without any real developments, Star and Marco spending time together and Tomstar and Kellco being almost entirely background, with maybe one segment apiece just for fun. Then Beach Day could be a Big Ship™ episode that compresses all the lack of emotion into one giant over-the-top romantic episode where they finally start realizing “huh after the last 8 episodes of our normal friendship, guess we do actually still maybe feel something special after all” and then the breakup(s) happen afterwards as a result of “welp guess it won’t work, it’s been fun” with the series finale being when Star and Marco finally get to say “YES AFTER ALL THIS I NOW REALIZE I LOVE YOU” and kissing once and that’s the end of the show. Which still would be satisfying if for NO other reason than the first 3 seasons lingering in my mind, I still will almost certainly love Starco as a whole no matter what. But holy mother of fuck this would be the dumbest shit ever, a complete reversal on how they’ve always handled everything, for seemingly no other purpose than because they wrote themselves into a corner where they wanted to force Starco to only be series finale, but they also made it so strong in the first 3 seasons that its natural progression would make it canon before then so they had to fuck with it, and would make me almost regret being anything more than a casual appreciator of the show.

So all in all I’m still, for the time being, at least willing to see where it goes I guess, because Star and Marco are still firmly embedded in my heart even if the show’s handling of them in this final stretch turns out to disappoint me in almost every way imaginable. Unless things TRULY go to shit, I have some plans for some fanworks post-canon that will, if nothing else, help me and maybe some of you make peace with the potential the show will likely waste in rising above romcom drama to portray Starco actually blossoming into a fully happy and healthy canon romantic relationship to rule them all. But I will almost definitely not be staying up into the morning watching and freaking out about episodes, if the show is going to appeal to the lowest common denominator of casual romance drama, I suppose I need to become a casual viewer to compensate.