High Guardian Spice dialogue is fundamentally meaningless. 

Number of “is crap a cussword?”comments: 33

As a writer, the very existance of HGR gives me courage to keep going, knowing that my writing isn't all too bad

It's actually kinda jarring just how much the main characters never talk like teenage girls like their supposed to. They talk more like shy 8 year olds that just gained the confidence to cuss

"and that's us" "you were a girl" "were" there i fixed yo dialogue

I forgot how unsubtle the writing is, it's like dumping a pile of bricks on my desk.

The reason why Caraway is unknown to Rose is one simple reason, Lavander was cheating on her husband

Edit idea: Caraway tries to explain but Rosemary knows fewer and fewer words. Example: Caraway: "I'm transgender" Rosemary: I don't know that word." C: "I was born into a female body" R: "I don't know that word" C: "... But it wasn't-" R: "I don't know that word either." C: 🤨

As a writer who speaks the dialogue out loud before I write it, this dialogue makes me cringe. How did they not realize how awkward this sounds?

what keeps bugging me is "everything hours" because it's NOT everything, it's "anything". Everthing hours suggests you'll do all the choices but anything means you get to pick

Caraway: I'm transgender. Rosemary: Despite being a gen z teen in high school, I have never heard that word! Caraway: Wow, so realistic, and definitely relatable to the youth of today. Let me explain... Caraway: **Pulls out dictionary** Transgender, noun...

what's crazy is that, by changing when their transition happened it could easily be used to explain why rose didn't recognise her teacher as her mothers partner, because rose was looking for a woman and not a trans man. but then this is a self insert, so they had to transition when the author did.

Caraway: "This is a picture of me and your mom" Rosemary: "Is this your sister?" Caraway: *looks at the camera* Caraway: "And you give me sh*t for explaining what transgender means in a cheap way? LOOK WHO I AM TALKING TO!"

The lack of mentioning Caraway to Rosemary could've worked if Lavender and Caraway had some kind of fight, but HGS hasn't established that so we'll never know

Ah so the trans scene wasn't a drug induced bad trip.... damnit

"no one ever questions your manhood" "you have no idea" **no one ever questions it in the show**

"This was *OUR* first everything hours." "Is ThAt YoUr SiStEr???" Wouldn't it have been better for Rosemary to just say "Ohhhhh... yeah, that explains your voice."? Or alternatively, if you really insist on keeping the "transgenderism for dummies" lecture in and keep Rosemary and oblivious zoomer, she could have said something like "You used to be a crossdresser?" Or "Wow, you looked so girly back in the day."

One of the problems with the transgender line, is that it doesn’t really say or add much beyond stating the Caraway is trans. While not a perfect fix, non visual character traits that are story unrelated will always feel awkward to write, i can imagine a few things that could improve it. Firstly, if “new magic” were a relatively new discovery and neither wildly known and used outside the Guardian profession, an early dialogue exchange like this could have been made. Rose “wow you were so cute as a child, but now you look so different” Caraway “yeah I was a cute girl but I didn’t feel like it, so I changed that” Sage “that doesn’t sound possible” Caraway “you’d be surprised what new magic makes possible. There are many uses for new magic behind just shooting things. Most unexplored and not well understood. It is part of the guardians responsibility to change that” While still a bit clunky such a rewrite it would say so much more like this. Because while the information of him being trans is now also conveyed, the overall meaning changes from simply stating that character fact to “new magic is powerful and can do otherwise thought to be impossible things” which leads to further non verbal information like how it hints that the magic could be dangerous or have side effects we aren’t aware of. Which is narratively more important and also more interesting from a world building perspective

I just realized, Rosemary not knowing what being trans means is even more dumb when you remember that Rose never questioned Anice being a lesbian and having a wife. Like, the show wants us to believe that Rose doesn't know what transgender means because she's young and all she knows is her heteronormative family, but she's not surprised by two women being in love and living as a couple. There should be a scene where Rose gets explained what being a lesbian means, especially since it's obvious Sage is a lesbian.

Even that little scene where Rosemary enters Caraway's office for the first time could have been done more interestingly. Instead of just saying, "Wow, you have a lot of cool stuff in here!", it could have been rewritten to show Rose flitting from object to object in Caraway's room. Maybe she's poking at scrolls, peeping through giant glass jars, gazing at maps, maybe even an object she lingers on (like some sort of magic artifact that's hinted on in the future), and Caraway warns her halfheartedly not to open 'that cork from the potion' before she does and it explodes in her face. A small, funny gimmick that also shows a bit of her hyper side, since the show only pays attention to her hyper side when it wants to. During serious moments, of course, she's always serious and solemn and completely out of character

I remember watching an old clip from some storyteller or animator from I think disney, that explained storytelling well. Never treat the audience as dumb because you will lose their attention. You don't give them "4", you give them "2+2", because its then on the audience to answer the question and they feel accomplished from answering it and thus you keep their attention. If you're shown a propeller, a picture of a father and son in front of a plane with a trophy, and a news clipping of an obituary. you're gonna know who you're looking at if the next shot is of a teenager wearing a pin with an airplane on it.

The fact Rosemary always said "you were a girl?" when she saw Caraway with long hair to be so odd to me. If she's supposed to be kind of airheaded, surely she would say something like, "Wow your hair was super long back then!" Leading into Caraway correcting her if he wanted to. Besides, it is a little closeminded of the writers to write an exchange that basically translates to: "Boys can't have long hair, therefore, this must be girl" As if battling of gender stereotypes isn't something the show talks about constantly. With how this show represents transition magic it almost seems like its some foreign, unheard of concept, even if there's really no need for it to be. So if they wanted to go with Rosemary not knowing what it was, then her saying "you were a girl" makes even less sense, as it seems to be that she's suggesting that she knows what transition magic is and immediately assumes that Caraway went with it, even though she doesn't know what "transgender" is in the next scene. The more logical exchange in that moment would just be Rosemary assuming Caraway was always a boy, and that he just had long hair when he was a kid.

TBH I don't even mind if a transgender character just openly says that they're transgender. Sometimes making things clear and without ambiguity is a good way to get info across too, *but* it was in a scene where it had no real relevance and had no deeper connection to the underlying themes/concepts of that episode. I definitely agree that the writers should have given that whole section its own scene rather than connect it to something unrelated. If a writer thinks certain information is important, they should treat with importance.

Caraway being best friends with Lavender is so much wasted potential. When she went missing, he could’ve gone to rosemary’s house personally to say that hey sorry but like your family member’s missing, I was there but I couldn’t do anything about it. And then rosemary would ask “if I become a guardian, will I find her?” Her dad could’ve been opposed to the idea, but rose would be determined enough to enroll into academy even without her family’s consent. It would explain so much in so little time I can’t believe they didn’t do simply that

One thing you didn't mention is that Rosemary looks at "all the cool stuff" when she enters the room but conveniently avoids all the pics of HER OWN MOTHER just so the lizard joke works lol

If Carroway took a moment of offense or confusion (even if he quickly hid it) at the fact that Lavender never mentioned their partnership, it could've been a nice thread starting towards "Lavender Evil" at the end.

You know, I wanna see a show that starts off poorly made & full of bad tropes, like HGS, but with purposefully made snippets of god tier lore, but a highly renowned but ominous figure shows up, and everything is fixed in his path. Turns out, all the canon bad writing is cause of someone causing in-universe distortions... And it's the mary sue-esque mc who's causing them. Plot can go wherever after that, it just seems like a god tier twist to me. =

Time for my bi monthly dose of crash courses of writing.

A big issue with this entire thing is they have Rosemary move on from the trans thing immediately as a way to say "see, this isn't important, it's just a part of them". But that's incredibly disingenuous because the entire scene is set up to show you how important it was to the writers that you KNOW Caraway is transgender, making the message come across as incrdibly hollow. In terms of the story, it doesn't matter. But the them? That was the entire point.

"Like her." "One of my closest friends." "Your mom." Bro I was laughing out loud so hard holy shit...

It's wild to think that HGS is almost 2 years old.

Another issue with the dialougue is that its often abused as a tool to dump large amounts of exposition on the audience

I have a fan theory that explains why Caraway isn't famous and it's similar to Guardian HQ's theory that Caraway's friendship with Lavender was one-sided. You know how there's pop stars so famous that they become household names? Like Beyonce, for example. Even though I've been listening to her since the Destiny's Child days, I can't name a single backup dancer she's had. Or backup vocalist. They have to be pretty skilled to keep up with her; so I'm sure most if not all of them are talented in their own rights. Still, unless I specifically look it up, I wouldn't know any of them. Typically only superfans and those in the industry would know who they are. Caraway was Lavender's backup dancer.

I think the worst thing about Caraway's trans situation is that...he isn't trans for himself. What I mean is, his transgenderism doesn't visibly provide anything for HIM, specifically - all that's done with his transness is telling others how transitioning works. He doesn't have any struggles with his new gender, nothing clever done with it, none of that. Also, Snapdragon looks like an oblivious moron for not believing there was any way to "just stop being a guy". Never considered that magic could do that. Even after seeing a similar process, a physiological change, happen to Neppy Cat. And then seeing transformative spells - Olive's petrification spark-spell, and the merfolk forms from Redbud's rings - that alter things more drastically than sex-changing would (matter and species, in this case). Also also, the show had already long established Lyngarth as queer-friendly. Caraway's comfy enough to allow pictures of his youth in the academy's public hallways. And yet at the same time, we can clearly see the hand of fate pushing Snapdragon around. SPECIFICALLY Snapdragon. Nobody else gets hit with so many queer-related victimhood events besides Snap. It's just not very consistent. Y'know, in FF10, the grand majority of Yevonites frequently spoke ill of the Al Bhed, not just Wakka. That convinces me that hatred toward Al Bhed is a common thing among Yevon followers. ...In fact, one of those "hand of fate" events is so blatant in its intent (though only in retrospect, because it alone isn't very blatant), it feels like a different conversation replaced the current one - this being Sage generalizing guys and girls in Ep6. When Snap tells her she shouldn't be so hung up about Rosemary, she suddenly changes the topic from "I don't want Rosemary to be with Aster" to "no guy can ever friendship properly". She's saying all this to Snap's face, as if to specifically shame him for being a guy with feelings. Just like, in Ep11, Yarrow shamed him for "sounding like a girl", and Cal shamed him for costuming like a girl (which was Amaryllis's idea in the first place). In fact, if I saw Ep6 completely blind, I'd have thought Snap was sick of Sage generalizing everybody. But thanks to the overall show's intent, this just seems to prove Sage's sexist venting right, as Snap - someone who's willing to talk about feelings - is apparently not truly a guy. Just...ignore the previous episode where PARNELL was talking about his feelings, and got more progress by talking about them to Slime Boy (Sage was too busy figuring out New Magic to notice). Actually, another message that would've been more relevant to Ep6 is that if Sage's friendship with Rose is that deep, then she should be able to trust Rose to sort out her crush on Aster herself - but we get nothing like that. In fact, Sage doesn't even think about apologizing for annoying Snap about it until she sees Rose being snippy with Aster.

After a bunch of HGS finally noticed the "uniforms" are not uniform. They're inconsistent on whether girls wear bows or ties. Actually it looks like ONLY Rose, Parsley and Rose's mom wear bows. If it was consistent it could've shown Carroway's social transition before going full on and Rose could've realized it herself from the pictures of "him" young. This is stupid.

One thing I hate about dialogue in any media is when a character says a line solely to beg the next line out of another character. In this show, it's like when Caraway says "you're so much like her." It's very obviously set up so Rosemary can say "like who?" and begin the discussion on Lavender. It's just so unrealistic. Unless someone misspeaks or is accidentally vague, folks don't actually talk like that, and understand they have to be specific in order to get their point across. It's just another example of the writers unnaturally forcing the story to go the way they want instead of finding a way to guide it there in a believable way.

That's shame I see better dialogue in fan fanfic than this show

Gon going into his dad's line of work to look for him is characterized infinitely better than Rosemary with her mom. It's amazing how someone can be characterized long before they're introduced and how poorly-done it is here.

Here's an idea to solve the "why isn't Caraway famous" question: make it so that transition magic had to be invented by Caraway (it can tie to the free period conversation by having inventing tranistion magic be the thing Caraway spent his free time on). He only managed to do actually invent transition magic later in life and finally performed it on himself at around the time of Lavender's disappearance, but it comes at the cost of all the fame because everyone else does not believe he is the partner of Lavender because her partner is widely known to be a female. This can result in wither the general public just assuming that Caraway is either the "real" Caraways twin brother who weirdly has the same name has is his sister and is trying to ride her coattails to fame or, more interestingly, the general public think that Caraway is some cringy attention-seeker with an outlandish story about inventing "transition magic".

Dang, you've really picked apart every little facet of this show, at this point, I'm surprised you haven't just straight-up remade the entire thing just to spite the original creators,

Thank you! Finally, somebody brought up just how stupid that word is! “Swordsing?” Seriously? That hurts my soul. Call it ‘swordsmanship’ if you MUST call it anything! Also, what do you mean they “cover broad stroke stuff?!” Caraway is admitting right here that they don’t even bother properly teaching the kids. How has no one died from just standing in this asylum?

I feel like there are ways to make Rosemary’s memory be less inconsistent while still seeming inconsistent (maybe it would have happened later in the show, but I doubt it). The solution is to give Rosemary some level of magical amnesia. Option 1: Say she overheard Lavender and Caraway talking about Lavender’s "last" mission, so Lavender and Caraway had erase Rosemary's memories to protect everyone. However, Lavender and Caraway are emotionally invested, so it messes with the amnesia spell - Rosemary forgot about the mission details, but she also forgot about Caraway and most of Lavender's adventures (which happened regularly during Rosemary's childhood). Since Rosemary didn't remember Caraway and Lavender had to leave soon, they told the father and brother not to mention anything to Rosemary about the Guardians, Lavender's missions, or Caraway. Additionally, Caraway would not return until Lavender did. Unfortunately, Lavender never returned. Option 2 (which I think I like better): This time we'll use Rosemary's nightmare as well as parts of Option 1. Once again, it's the last time Rosemary will see her mom before her year-long mission. Caraway had come to visit/convince Lavender to let him come with, but they ended up fighting and Rosemary overheard them. Rosemary had wanted to get one last round of sword training in with Lavender, but then ran away when she heard her mom and "uncle" fighting. However, Rosemary ran straight into danger, which Caraway and Lavender saved her from. This danger was directly connected to Lavender's mission, so she took the chance she had and disappeared with the monster/enemy while telling Caraway to protect Rosemary. After recovering from the battle and disorientation of Lavender's disapperance, Caraway took a passed-out Rosemary into bed. At first, Caraway thought Rosemary might be fine, but she was clinging to him and having nightmares, so Caraway decided to erase her memories of himself, the night Lavender disappeared, and Lavender's mission. Unfortunately, Caraway's emotional connection messed with the spell, leaving Rosemary with more memories and less memories than she should have had (resulting in it seeming like Lavender was gone on missions more often than she actually was, but Rosemary also remembers some parts of that last night). Then the story progresses with Rosemary more or less as portrayed in canon. For a non-amnesia trope, Lavender and Caraway could literally be on some many missions/missions take long enough, that Lavender is lucky to get to be with her family once every other month. Additionally, Caraway is a teacher while Lavender is a high-ranking/well-known Guardian, so there might only be a few times when Caraway could come around to see Lavender's family, especially if he wasn't close to anyone other than Lavender. Additionally, Caraway could have been doing research and experiments that further limited his time (while also giving Lavender more down time), keeping him from spending much time with Lavender and her family. As for why Caraway never visits after Lavender disappears - with the amnesia spell, his presence could either weaken/break the spell or otherwise negatively impact the spell. With the unfortunate timing of events, it would depend on how close he even was to being with. If he showed up a lot until Rosemary was 5-7 years old, it would be a mix of guilt/regret for not being around more and wishing he could do more/had done more to help Lavender on her mission. If he had shown up a lot up until Rosemary was 10/Lavender disappeared, it would mostly be about blaming himself for Lavender's disappearance. And as it seems to be with a lot of the story, if they had just taken more time to review the plot and see how things connected to each other, thenthey could have made a better story by keeping the good pieces of framework while taking out the extra pieces that seemed nice, but didn't actually make sense where they were.

I never truly paid attention to what he says till this video "Im trans" ok fine, we understand it, kids dont yet, so explain "Means I was born in the wrong se*/body so I changed" Ok so far so good How tho? "I use a spell to change my form" cool, makes sense so far "And I use a potion to keep that spell active" THATS NOT HOW SPELLS WORK, if anything thats a Manapotion as the spell would continously drain your magic but that is not how the spell SHOULD work cause whats the point of transforming if its only temporary?? Also youd need to chug that potion on the daily if not 4 times a day cause that aint a small fear to change the anatomy and biology of your own body. Mans not a transitioned woman, Mans a Man for all intent and purpose.

I was reading this story. Baiscally a bloodborne fanfic with heavy monster-fucker influences. Usual "man meets werewolf, they go from enemies to friends" type stuff. Well late in the story, there's a part where the hunter and wolf are visiting a blind old woman. The wolf comments that, due to her huge and beastly body, she doesn't feel suited for "women" work. Then this old woman, who hasn't been relevant save for one chapter some time ago, goes on a little talk about how gender is performative and that if she feels like a woman, she is. In a bloodborne fanfic. It just took me right out of it for how I could practically see them turning towards the imaginary screen and saying it directly. It's so out of place.

hgs can't seem to decide if being trans is just a casual part of the worldbuilding no different from turning into a mermaid, or if being trans is a Big Deal Actually and transitioning makes you Brave and Cool. I've seen good stories that do either, but no good stories that do both

I never thought the phrase "ok next question" would make me choke woth laughter. She really said "k." to him being trans

What gets me is that not even a world where magic literally exists can just turn you into the opposite gender, you have to take the magical equivalent of hormone therapy once a month. Which feels like there SHOULD just be a way to do this better in the story, and honestly seems to sort of say to the audience that even in a magical fantasy world, they can't just transition magically and be done with it.

"Im transgender" "Mate most of us arnt even human anymore, we dont care lol"

As a trans guy myself I think that the "I'm transgender" scene is the definition of the "shoving it down your throat" conservatives are always talking about. I want trans characters who are normal people. I don't want to be preached to like I'm six years old. It also feels almost transphobic in a way how all of the other male characters are portrayed as awful but "not the TRANS one because he's not a REAL MAN."

I can kind of understand Rose not knowing who Caraway is in relation to her mom, since my parents never really introduced me or my sister to any of their friends when we were growing up. But it is still strange. I feel like the show was going for the whole sort of 'Oh, so many people knew my parent(s)' that Harry Potter went for but didn't execute it that well.

writing this as i go through the video. tbh the voice acting also affects the overall dialogue, but the writing affects the voice acting. the voice acting sounds so unnatural because the actors have to say things that are unnatural, and its difficult to make that sound normal. its like trying to do good voice acting in a language you dont understand, its next to impossible. 14:40 Carroway laughing here id say is passable. my grandparents laugh at my everyday behavior constantly. 21:10 the fact that Crunchyroll decided to age-up the show was def one of the leading factors that killed it. if it stayed a kids show i imagine it would do pretty well, at the very least things could be explained away by it being aimed at young audiences.

The irony here is the show could have made it seem like gender doesn't matter, not just with the teacher. But with slime boy and the shape shifter. Much like the slime, Rimuru, and shape shifting sphere, Fushi, (from to your Eternity) both are technically genderless and can be anyone and anything that they feel like. Rimuru is just sees them selves as male because he was a man in the past. While Fushi uses the first boy's body, because they made a promise that he can travel the world and learn new things. This was Fushi keeping that promise for the boy. Without realizing it. But with slime kid and shape shifter, they could have been ambiguous with their gender. So the teacher being a transgender would be... You know... NORMAL.

Funny story, in any system where you can change gender (and form) easily, no one would actually care enough to call it 'transgender'. It'd just be, "so yeah, this is John. He calls himself Jenny now, but you know how it is with wizards and their potions. We don't care, he had three kids to continue our bloodline so we just tolerate him. Hey, Jenny, I see you've lost weight!"

7:45 How exactly does pottery, ballet dance, or drawing, help with a physical adventure in the realm of ice dragons? "Hold on Mr. Dragon, you're being very rude attacking me when I'm not done sketching out your portrait yet".

Man, you're getting more work out of this dead horse then the showmakers ever could.

Loved the explanation at the start, of how our brains can unconsciously identify when something doesn't seem quite right, and that's exctly how I felt after seeing the scene, the dialogue just feels ... off, like aliens trying to imitate human conversations.

I think the funniest thing about the dialogue is the weird and unneeded swearing. This show was definitely meant for kids, but they got told they had to age it up, so the only thing they did to do that was add a couple of awkward swears in the generally kids show sounding script, coming out the mouths of characters that are basically written like kids.

Wait. This setting as a demon world? I mean, that makes sense with the demon teacher lady and all but that just hit me like a brick to the head. Namely, where the hell does this demon world fit in with the rest of the world building?!

The writers should've chosen writing for their everything hours LMAO

Holy crap, the transgender scene feels like my nails are being pulled out

C: this was our first everything hours. R: *looks confused. Looks at picture back at Caraway.* C: new magic brought new solutions to the world’s problems, and ours. *smiles.* R: *smiles before looking sad.* i wish it could tell me where she is.. C: *sad smile.* yeah..i wish that too.

The "I'm Transgender" joke at the beginning was extremely funny. I didn't expect that at all.

Imagine a Show so bad, even 2 years later, you still have something new to say about how bad it is.

Some fixes that could be done. Have Caraway mainly talk about "Everything Hours", and at some point comment that Rosemary reminds him of her mother, then show her the album and let the pics show how close they are, with maybe a few comments here and there. Have Rosemary question why no one talks about him, since everyone apparently knows her mother but he doesn't seem to have that same fame. Have Caraway maybe dodge the question a bit. At some point during this, have Rosemary flipping the pages to the earlier portions that show Caraway as a girl. Even without realizing the emphasis on LGBT in the series people would guess from the context that there's something up with that girl and Caraway, maybe even guessing he's trans, and those that had *somehow* managed to put together the theme would guess immediately. On top of that, bringing up the fact that Lavender's done a lot of the same stuff as Lavender but doesn't share her fame would raise possibilities of discrimination. With just that, things would be made more subtle, the scene would be more focused, and we'd be given at least some actual indication of the discrimination Caraway alludes to later. This would also imply that transition magic, while named, isn't exactly as widely accepted as initially apparent.

Caraway: What have we learned Rose? Rosemary: That I don't need to change and continue to be a spazz? Caraway: And? Rosemary: Errr, that I am going to be a great warrior like my mom no matter how much of a fuck up I am? Caraway: Ok...And? Rosemary: Errr, uh, swordsing....? Caraway: I'm transgendered Rose.

I like the subtlety of "As 3-Dimensional as a stick figure" as an insult here, because a stick figure is barely even 2-dimensional, which is about what HGS is

I thought you were already rewriting the dialog to be better in the abridged version. That's at least 5 times better than the show.

Ok, on the everything hours list of whys, I think it does explain in the show the answer. Prof. Dretch mentions that they'll have to use the skill they choose in an adventure set by the teachers throughout the semester during that time. In other words, a "practical test". So the teachers would need to know what the choice is and the scope would need to be limited to devise standardized testing. I'm looking forward to the art students' survival ratio.

Dialog in HGS sounds like it was written while on shrooms and English is their third language

This makes my fantasy setting look like friggin Tolkien

I was just finishing Spilling the Milk's High Guardian Spice reaction and then this vide popped up. Coincidence?

Good video, it really does go in depth to explain not just this show’s lackluster writing, but the use of dialogue as a whole. Your comedic quips - especially the Door Monster reference, that joke a shocked laugh out of me - did well to keep me invested and not let the video get tuned out upon other distractions.

what kills me is how few good queer and especially trans stories there are when they basically write themselves. like, figuring yourself out, changing as a person, fear of being rejected by society and/or those close to you, keeping secrets, living life differently with different people, potentially being ashamed of who you are and having to accept yourself... that's the queer experience right there, and think about how many stories have these as their core elements. to the point that it's become a running joke in trans communities that trans people see everything as trans allegories. being queer *is* a story, how is it so difficult for people to write stories about being queer?!

I'm so glad these reviews, video essays and critiques exist because I had someone recommend HGS to me by saying it was kinda like The Owl House for adults. I'm grateful not to have wasted my time and kept my expectations from being assaulted 😅

the way someone talks about their transness can be written as a reflection of their personality, and I think this should have been considered more when writing Caraway. he talks about his experience so blandly. on the rare occasion that I talk about my trans identity, I usually say "I was born a chick" or "back when I was a sheila" or "back then, when I looked like a girl" and I think that says something about my relationship with my current appearance and past identity. Other people I know say things like "when I was female-passing" or "when I wasn't out of the closet" because they have different feelings re: their past selves. hell, even small things like whether someone uses the terms "amab/afab" "mtf/ftm" or just "born a girl/guy" can say a lot about how they relate to these words and ideas. caraway just kind of has no personality. it's like they were afraid of making him less than perfect representation, and because of this, they made him vastly uninteresting.

For me it was mostly just 'snooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore' like I was nodding off even with the awkwardness to examine. Some things can be so bad its good but this def had moments of 'this is bad and not good just I am bored.'

As a trans person, that conversation of him "coming out" to the pink haired mf was so fucking cringeworthy. There were a 100 better ways to talk about that character's gender. It was awkward and robotic. Ain't NO trans person talking like that

"You're a girl?!" "I used to be." End of story

Trying to find logic in HGS is like trying to find water in the desert, during the really dry season.

Everything in between "This was our first Everything Hours" and "I'd give anything to know where she is right now" could be replaced by a shot or two of the photo album showing Lavender and Caraway over the years and get the same message across.

First time coming across this channel (possibly), but not the first time experiencing snippits of this show and being confused about how some of these lines got through to the final production. The "I'm transgender" scene is so strange. It treats its audience like they're idiots, despite the audience being the exact people who know who trans people are and what transitioning can mean for someone. The whole point of rosemary finding the picture of lavender is to initiate the conversation to learn more about what her mother was like. It could have been much more organic to have caraway say something along the lines of learning to become comfortable being himself around lavender, which is enough to explain his transition with the visual aid of his photobook as well as tell us a bit about the positives of lavender's character. Why did the writers feel the need to have him explain himself being transgender as well as the magic system for transitioning? As an aside, why did the writers settle on a magic system that forces people to keep up their desired appearance in regular intervals as oppose to letting them change themselves indefinitely? Baffling choice. Edit: just caught the follow-up video, great job on that! The story actually became intriguing.

Being one of the few people who have actively watched and re-watched the show, it's truly wild how constant this problem of dialog twister is. Doesn't matter what the previous line is, the next line will bend over backwards and end up not making any sense why these two phases would logically flow into each other, because all the writers are focused on is "how can we wrestle against the character writing in order for us to get to *this* line?" I will say I personally quite liked that line in this scene about how Rosemary’s sword still has all the battle marks from Lavender but Rose is against leaving any herself. It's a good bit of character writing, as it paints a picture of a reluctant warrior who is intimidated by the legacy around her sword to the point of taking extreme care of it and not even using it in battle yet. Explains why she may freak out so much if even the pommel inevitably gets chipped. I would even defend it if it wasn't tied to Rose, because let's be honest it really doesn't go with *her* character who would whip out her sword against random flies... And the fact that once that glimpse of good characterization dialog is finished, they immediately drop it like it shouldn't matter, like they just wanted some fancy dialog lesson for this one moment. Ugh... why must they keep throwing out their show's potential like it's water on a hot city pavement... Truly, it's fascinating how far you can rewrite this show by having the dialog extend and impact past/more than just the one scene that they dumped it in... It's like they were playing a game of telephone with it I swear 🙄

"I dont know that word" you're literally a wizard and he sair he used potions..

Remember the scene in Owl House where Luz says “I’m homosexual” and the other scene where she says “I’m Hispanic”. You don’t? That’s because those scenes don’t exist and the writers of Owl House understand the golden rule of representation: “Show don’t tell”. It’s stuff like that that shows that shows like Owl House are written by actual adults while shows like High Guardian Spice are written by insecure man children.

Why is it called transition magic and not transformation magic, and why is it temporary?

Caraway's voice is just...it's so unprofessional. I get what type of voice they were going for, but it's way too...whispy and mumbly. Voice acting should be clear and easily presented.

Rosemary: "do you know where my mom is"? Caraway: "I'm transgender". Rosemary: "I don't care". Caraway: "stop being transphobic or I'll get you expelled". 😊😊

Caraway could have just gone "oh I'm transgender" and have Rose reply "oh lol ok" and have the conversation continue but NOOO this show for ADULTS and QUEER AUDIENCES need to explain to QUEER AUDIENCES what TRANSGENDER IS

Rosemary should have at least heard and known what the word "transition" means.

'i take a potion once a month' im actually sobbing rn

You know, if it had been done well "everything hours" could make sense and even have potential (and another name, something more like "specialty hour" at a quick idea). The explanation makes it sounds like free time, but also mentions that the students only have a week to choose what to do there. So to me this is basically "elective time", where they train a personal skill, something outside their usual classroom range but you *are* expected to train something in it with a teacher that is more focused on that specialty. If you took another fictional school as an example, FF8's Gardens, they have classes about GFs and magic (you need to use GFs to be able to use magic), physical fighting and actual classroom classes (we start the game after the last class and go right to the exams). If you gave them "everything hours", I assume it is where they learn their exclusive skills. Sure, Squall's gunblade triggering and Zell's combos count as close combat, but they are also more specialized so they would be like Rosemary's "swording". And Quistis learns Blue Magic from enemy items, Rinoa is basically a one-dog beast tamer, etc.

This scene but better: R: "Is this your sister?" C: "It's me, actually. I'm trans." R: "Woah, I've never seen transformation magic done in real life before, I've only ever read about it." C: "It's one of the many types of magic you will learn more about here, but that's not important right now. What's important is your Everything Hours-"

"He is sooo baked right now." I HOLLERED-

My problem with the whole "I'm Transgender" scene is not that Caraway points out he is trans, but the ENTIRE conversation not only leaves nothing to the imagination but also changes the subject of Lavender completely, which makes him out to look selfish. If he said something along the lines of "Let's just say I've had a few changes" after Rosemary questions him being a girl, not only does that allow the audience to put the pieces together themselves, but also adds a comedic yet charismatic dialog to Caraway. Plus, it'll make it so the subject isn't changed. But hey, that's for competent writers to know.

I love watching your videos, man. Wish you were verified.

The only remotely creative point in this conversation is how knicks and scars are how you know a weapon has seen battle, and that point was made much more effectively in the _Legend of the Guardians_ movie, and they actually had the balls to use a veteran warrior's heavily scared face to illustrate the point.

the thing that drives me to the wall the most >everything hour >lasts two hours

Carroway isn't a bad character because he's trans, he's a bad character because he's a poorly written Gary Stu self insert. I say this as a trans man.

There's so many ways to rewrite the transgender dialogue to make it more tasteful it's embarrassing. Here, this is my version: Rosemary: "You were a girl?" Caraway: *chukles to himself* "I was born into a girl's body. But after some time I realized that wasn't who I am." Rosemary: "And how did you..." Caraway: "Change it? I use new magic of course." Rosemary: *Looks back to the photo album and sees the transition* "I didn't know you could do that..." Then she spots the mandrake photo and they start talking about that in a more smooth natural way. No need to throw the word "transgender", no need to use "female" as if you were writing a scientific paper, no need to throw the unnecessary detail of exactly how Caraway has to drink a potion every month for his transformation that doesn't add anything except for maybe a small "oh it's like my HRT for real" that only feels like a failed attempt to pander to a certain audience...

I’m trans and HGS makes me uncomfortable because of how infantilizing it feels.

The reason Lavender didn't mention Caraway to Rosemarry was because their friendship was just like Sage and Rosemarry's: One-sided and Toxic