Star So Far; Star Vs. The Forces of Evil Season 3A

Two weeks in November, started the first Monday and ended ... the Thursday before Justice League. I'm not good with dates.

This honestly kills me every fucking time.

Star vs. The Forces of Evil is my favorite currently airing cartoon. I was born too late to be in the hey day of the magical girl genre - seriously, Sailor Moon began airing 9 months before I was born - but it's always something I thought was neat.

I wrote most of this before the season concluded, so there's going to be some edits.

"I have to focus on being a better princess." 

I love this. Despite the fact that there really doesn't seem to be lasting damage on Mewni from Ludo's takeover, Star knows that her first duty is to her people and that she can't go back to earth, at least not right now...or ever.

They still have the Silver Bell Ball, however, where the other kingdoms of Mewni get together and make their offspring dance. And so far, with the exception of her Monster Philanthropy ("Starfari"), what has she done? Why didn't she talk to Eclipsa about the monster treatment?

EDIT: Well. Talk about "Monster Bash". Honestly, what qualifies as a 'monster'. Mewnians range from human to flying disembodied pony heads to fish people to...goblins? But monsters are anthro squirrels and woolly mammoths and...goo. Where would Underworld inhabitants that don't look as humanoid as Tom go?

I guess Mewni itself is a section of a planet. Maybe it's the name of the planet? I think it's something like Naboo in Star Wars - like the actual...place is called Mewni and the planet is too.

Come to think of it, Star and Padme are my favorite characters of both of their respective franchises. Go figure.

"It's like you went to Mewni...but you never came back."

I guess it depends on the dimension, but Mewnian time seems to pass just like that on earth, but in Hekapoo's dimension, 18 years = about an hour on earth.

So far, I'm fairly disappointed with how they handled Jackie. Marco even says in Season 2 that he doesn't want to have this fantasy of her in his head and wants to know the real her, but...she's still this perfect, understanding girl who has no emotions besides going with the flow. I didn't want an angry love triangle (Or, square), but that was a let down.

"You're trying to be a better person. And that's what counts!"

I'm paraphrasing.

The fact that Star left Tom because of his temper and he's spent the past two seasons trying to improve himself, not just for her, but for his own sake. I truly don't dislike the Star/Tom relationship. I don't care about relationships when I"d rather magic shenanigans but I don't dislike it.

The good thing about Marco going to Mewni is that we can restart the Tom / Marco friendship. That was always so entertaining.

Speaking of, Lava Lake Beach. I still need some more female monsters to not be skinny but still monstrous waifs, please and thank you, but the attitude toward the episode seems overblown.

It's just Marco working through his feelings by working with Tad, so...alright.

Sweet Dreams was clearly a set up to something else, but with no payoff, it felt kind of pointless. I did like the visuals and sound!

There is more Ponyhead and we finally get to see her family, which was mentioned way back in the Interdimensional Guide.

There was always a lot of chatter on places about how Princess Marco was basically alluding to Marco being a trans girl, and people rolled with it as canon, so I was worried how the show would handle it.....because it's very like modern day humanity to turn on a show that didn't tease anything, but had people draw conclusions.

"Princess Turdina" handled it pretty well. "What does it matter that he's a boy? He can be a princess if he wants to!" I also loved the variety of princesses.

"Deep Dive" was cool. The magic realm where Star made a unicorn at the beginning of Season 3. So what about the unicorn that powers her wand (go back to the finale of Season 1 to refresh yourself!), I guess that gets power from the Magic Realm too? That and "Night Life" reaffirmed that Star and Marco, no matter how the latter may be feeling, are still friends, and stick together.

We end 3A with the biggest revelation of the series so far - and i'm writing this before I even watch the episode so we'll see what happens later -

 It's reconfirmed that Heinous is distantly related to Star. Remember in Season 1 where she was covering her face markings, most of us assumed she was Moon's sister and then eventually...well, the information really never came up again until now.

Very distantly, like a step from Eclipsa distantly. She's Eclipsa's half monster daughter and her real name is Meteora.

That's awesome on top of awesome! The only reason I'm slightly miffed is because Meteora was my fan character name but if the canon version is a monster princess, I will live.

 "Monster Bash", Star is basically doing her own thing to make the future better and didn't bother to tell Tom....which is something I would totally do. If you don't have to know, I'm not telling you.

As someone who really enjoys the history of this magical matriarchy, this excites me a great deal.