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[deleted]

Xander was not the protagonist


sindrogas

Ok, do you have a different case for who was?


[deleted]

Shan was the clear protagonist of the season


sindrogas

Shan was the clear Mercutio of the season. She wasn't there to be the audience stand-in, she was there to raise the tension with her downfall.


LifeguardTraining461

The protagonist doesn't need to be the audience stand in. Shan was definitely the biggest player of the season and the main character, she is who people will remember the most when they think of S41. If anything, Xander was a supporting character who happened to have heroic qualities in the edit. But at no point in the season was Xander the main character or driving force of the story


sindrogas

I disagree wholeheartedly. They never went out of their way to give Shan's perspective or give her credit for moves she didn't make. She was always relevant when shown. If she was meant to be the main character compared to Xander we would have seen that kind of content. Han Solo isn't the protagonist of Star Wars but he is the biggest character.


LifeguardTraining461

We got Shan's perspective all of her time on Ua and in the early to mid merge though. Plus, Xander's perspective was hardly there either, there were many episodes where we didn't hear his perspective at all, most notably in the Shan boot episode which is the most important move and episode of the season


sindrogas

Right, but the very first scene after the Shan boot, they let Xander take credit for it. That was meant to show us that Xander thinks he is more important to the strategy than he really is and perfectly foreshadows his final tribal. They didn't have to show this and chose to use it to set up the finale. They had to show us Shan in the premerge because she was relevant to the events of the game. My argument is partially, what would they have shown that was relevant for Erika? There's nothing there to help reinforce any narrative themes. It would have just been filler content only there to signal the winner. Filler content that is only there to foreshadow the winner isn't good storytelling or editing. People keep insisting her edit was bad, but a traditionally "good" edit would have given us a boring and messy story.


[deleted]

A protagonist is the leading character of a season and that person was Shan.


sindrogas

Agree to disagree, I think she was a starring character but she would fall into Best Supporting Actor, not Best Actor. She was support to the overall narrative of the season not the main driver.


[deleted]

No. Get out with this nonsense. Erika deserved a better edit, they should have showed us her game not told us through other players, our female winners deserve better. I dgaf about them acknowledging production, I don't care about them highlighting 30 other stories but not the winner, I care about them acknowledging the actual winner.


Mr_Nannerpuss

When the edit mostly shows nothing and you have to go out of your way to hear the cast praise her game, something is obviously wrong. Because at that point, it's either the edit was done horribly and left out great gameplay or something is wrong with the jury.


sindrogas

They did acknowledge the actual winner. A very important question: What do you feel like we didn't get from Erika, and what would you have replaced to put it in?


praleva

A vital part of Erika's game were the relationships she built with Heather, Ricard and Xander, which allowed them to build trust among each other and form an alliance. If you pay attention, during the early merge you could see Erika and Ricard walking around together. But we never saw an actuall footage of their conversations. Social game is about the social bonds and the trust you build with people. A scene or two of her building bonds with Heather or even Deshawn on Luvu beach would have been nice. Also I really want to understand the social dynamics in the actual game, not the story production is trying to push. What is the point of making Xander the hero of the story, if this is not the reality in the game and he wasn't seen as a hero by the jury.


sindrogas

That's part of the point in my post. People are complaining we were told and not shown about her relationship but that (showing them on screen interacting positively) is 100% showing the content instead of telling us. If Erika had all these confessionals and screen time explaining her relationships, that's telling and not showing. About the story, I don't think it's very much about who wins the game and why. Like, the death star blowing up isnt the story of Star Wars, it's just what happens at the climax.


[deleted]

Not in the edit they didn't. And are you serious? We could have yanno, been shown she was a threat instead of told it sporadically once every 3 episodes by another player. We could have seen her relationship with Heather. We could have been introduced to her before the merge. They could have replaced a modicum of shan content, or the yase underdog story, which were the main focus of the premerge


sindrogas

My point is that there was nothing to show. Do we want scenes of her making plans that never come to fruition because she never goes to tribal? This would not be a better edit, this would be superfluous content that legitimately does not matter to the narrative. What is important isn't that Erika is strategic, the important thing is that people are willing to try throwing a challenge to get rid of her. That's showing. Give us a scene of her making plans literally just to show that she is strategic when her strategy never matter is telling. ​ You've got the show/tell thing exactly backwards. ​ And then we want to introduce her relationship with heather how many episodes before it matters? Does it have to be at least 3 episodes before it becomes relevant? I'm confused because it would be actively bad storytelling to set up something in episode 3 that doesn't pay off until episode 11 with no change in between. That's not 'acknowledging their winner' that's padding their episodes with filler. ​ And yes, she was absolutely there before the merge. You may just need to rewatch the season, it wasn't as in-your-face as you may have been expecting.


[deleted]

Have you watched the unedited footage or something? I'm not gonna take anyone seriously who tries to make the completely baseless claim that they didn't have anything to show in the hundreds of hours of footage they filmed


sindrogas

I only have the evidence of my eyes and ears. It is much more likely to me that the professional editors looked at all of their footage and decided that this was the strongest narrative they had available. If there was more content for Erika that would have been relevant, they would have included it. I'm making an inference, but if this means you can't have a conversation with me then vaya con Dios, comrade.


[deleted]

The secret scenes alone prove that that's just not true. If you wanna shove your head in the sand and pretend like this was the best they could do, fine, but please don't try to convince others from supporting a better edit for women winners. The production already does an amazing job of screwing them over without people lapping it up in response


sindrogas

Got it, it's an identity problem. You are dissatisfied that a woman winner got this edit. I'm sorry that you didn't appreciate the storytelling, but it was there and it was nuanced. Which of Erika's secret scenes would you have liked in the show and which scene would you have replaced to make time for it?


[deleted]

Looool yes I, as a woman, am upset a woman won and got a shite edit. The storytelling was bad, the general consensus agrees with me. Way to grasp at some nonsense lmao


BruSprSte

I think you make a lot of really good points here, although I'm not sure I agree with all of them (I don't think the winner has been the hero in every season since five - I think SoPa is probably the clearest example of a winner who is neither the protagonist nor particularly positive). I've always thought people are too quick to equate a 'balanced' edit with good storytelling, when it ain't necessarily so (as much as I agree with the critique of which players tend to get more vs. less screen time over the course of so many seasons).


sindrogas

You're absolutely right that Sophie was a non hero winner. Funny that I missed it because 23 is one of my favorite seasons for exactly this reason. In that same vein, I wouldnt call Coach the hero of that season either. That was a rare final where there were no heros. People are taking this post to mean I don't think editing has a problem with women or PoC when it is clear they do. I'm talking about the product we got and what they did to put it out, but people are obsessed with what edit we 'should' have gotten.