[0:00]Imagine a love triangle so bad that the audience started shipping the two guys together out of spite. I know that sounds fake, but somehow Star versus the Forces of Evil managed to pull it off. And to be fair, this wasn't one of those Tumblr woke up one day and chose chaos situations. The show was feeding into it. could tear us apart. Star versus the Forces of Evil is the Game of Thrones of cartoons. Which is to say, it's pretty good, deeply messy, and the only thing anyone ever talks about is the finale. Which was terrible both in quality and for my liver, because they dropped the same day. Now why now what what did you want? Star versus being blunt is a textbook example of a show being pretty good, only to watch it get completely gas in the fourth quarter, as it doesn't feel like they expected to get this far. I do believe that the show was always planned to have four seasons, but if you told me that they only had three, then got hit with a last-minute renewal, I'd believe it. Because outside of the future villain being missing and Star's relationship being left open, the story was basically wrapped. Conquer, in my opinion, is a pretty good series finale. Dare I say it's better than the battle for the overhyped lizard. Which makes everything that followed feel hired. And nowhere is that exhaustion more obvious than the romantic subplots. After two seasons of build up, Marco's PG friends with benefits thing just ended off screen between episodes. Which was such an insane L even the worst Starco fans felt bad for Kelco's. As the writers really took our ship and killed it, with our only sauce being that Starco's conclusion wasn't much better. It wants to be a triumphant message of, oh, how love conquers all, but the background shows two dimensions being fused together and untold horrors being released onto the world. But don't worry about that, the teenagers are happy. Star vs. has always got side eye for not thinking through the implications of some of its writing choices. Like how they casually made Marco a 30-year-old man trapped in a teenager's body, who dates children. How do you do, fellow kids? The fact that they both have red hoodies somehow makes this more accurate. But it really says something that the grand emotional climax of the series, Star and Marco finally getting together, ends up becoming one of the most maligned aspects of the entire show. Which goes a long way in explaining why as a series went on, the Phantom became increasingly interested in Marco and Star dating literally anyone else. And the most popular option, the demon ex-boyfriend Tom for both of them. Hey Star. I've already made videos about how Star versus completely fumbled its ships, but in the interest of starting a holiday tradition I've already failed to maintain, I want to take a closer look at Marco and Tom's relationship. How they met, how they developed a bond that ended up being way more compelling than anything Star and Marco had going on, and how while some ships happen at basically random, this one was basically gift wrapped by the narrative. Because every time Tom and Star are together, the story is actually about Marco. Because like Sokka before him, Marco Diaz is shipped with everyone and Star cheat on Tom with him. So, He trapped us in there. I trapped you in there. For the 12 people who somehow don't know what Star versus the Forces of Evil even is, it's basically the story of, what if a magical girl had ADHD and consequences? Until, you know, she didn't. On her 14th birthday, Star Butterfly is given a magical wand and immediately begins foreshadowing the finale by destroying the kingdom. This results in her parents sending the gold stainer for love and care by making her someone else's problem. Dumping her on Earth, she moves in with the Diaz family and befriends Marco. And the two just become best friends who go on long strings of shenanigans and field adventures, being up oppressed groups who are just trying to steal the magical weapon that has been used to subjugate them for centuries, and occasionally, the pair deal with school drama. And overall, it was a really good time. If we can give Star vs. credit for anything, is that it was one of Disney's early darlings when it came to transitioning from episodic filler adventures, to a more focused serialized story. Gravity Falls, notwithstanding, yeah, it's peak, but for this show, it managed to tread the needle between doing wacky nonsense and then slowly recontextualizing it into something much darker. Like how Star's people celebrated their founding as a righteous liberation from evil, when in reality it was a one-sided slaughter where her people stole the land from the indigenous non-human creatures. And then spent centuries demonizing the survivors as heartless monsters. These are like genuinely complex ideas for a kid show, and for a while, Star vs. did a pretty good job at handling them. The problem only started later when the show had to suddenly like build off of them and eventually lean on the absolute cop-out answer of magic bad. After four seasons of demonstrating fairly clearly that the people and the systems in place were the real source of harm, and oh hey, they just let the genocidal racist live for some reason. But despite all of that, despite the show occasionally driving straight off the narrative cliff, there is one character who remained consistently good from beginning to end. Tom Lucitor, the evil ex-boyfriend who learns how to not be an ass hole. You better run. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. Ho. The creators of Star vs. has joked that Tom was inspired by all her previous ex-demon boyfriends, which frankly turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because it meant the show had to take genuinely unlikable traits and treat them like actual flaws. Things this demonic child needed to grow past, and in the process, the audience learned to empathize with him. Confront us with the fact that, yeah, we kind of assumed the worst about this kid. Though, to be fair, we had absolutely good reasons to, but he just wasn't a villain. We actually first meet Tom in the second episode of the show. Star tries to ask magical Siri for help, immediately regrets it, as she accidentally called Tom instead of her mom. And in doing so, Tom proves all his future haters right, as he goes from surprised and excited to hear from her to screaming at her not to hang up. Which makes our first impression of Tom refreshingly clear. He's an asshole. Now some performatively patient individuals might suggest that we just jumped to conclusions based on a single interaction. But that would require ignoring the context that this is a kid's show. On Disney, the idea that an ex-boyfriend in a Disney cartoon might be a normal person is about as likely as a cartoon stepmom not being evil. Yes, it's a stereotype, but coming from this company, the alternative functionally does not exist. Though allegedly it does in some show that I haven't watched. So, when we see a demon blow up at his ex for not listening to him, it's a pretty safe bet that the kid is going to be a villain, and that he was the problem in the relationship. And Star versus confidently steps forward and says, yeah, on both accounts. Now here's where Tom's writing actually gets interesting. Tom is an ass hole. Marco is completely justified in assuming based on Tom's everything, that he isn't nearly as nice as he's pretending to be. Tom claims he's changed, shows up at Star's school and invites her to the Blood Moon ball. Only for us to later find out that this was a borderline nefarious scheme to win her back. Because he planned to use the Blood Moon to bind their souls together, which is not healthy, but it is worse that even after he became friends with him, he doesn't bring this up till it starts becoming a problem. But what makes Tom's writing work is that it manages to make two things true at once. Tom was wrong, and Tom is trying to change. The demon is an ass hole pretending he's speed run therapy to trick Star into taking him back, and he is genuinely trying to change. Those two things coexist, his first big hurdle is realizing he's not in Gravity Falls. He can't use magic to force teenagers to fall in love and stay like that. Tom can't force Star to love him. Just like how he can't improve himself for the sole purpose of getting his ex back. What Tom is practicing is a very shallow version of moral deserts. He's trying to be better not because he wants to be, but because he wants the reward that he thinks will come with it. We see this immediately with the Blood Moon where, despite successfully leading Star to go with him, Tom is an agro mess the entire night. He is tweaking because he cannot control everything. He alters the traditions of the dance not to make them less ghoulish for his own sake, but to make them more appealing to Star. He gets mad when she doesn't wear the hairpin he picked out for her, and then he leaves the dance entirely to switch the music back to the song that they heard the first time they met. Tom is not focused on the person he's with, he's focused on forcing the moment to match the version he created in his head. And this is one of the earliest points of contrast between him and, well, Marco. Tom wants everything to fit a specific mold, Marco is content to just ride the waves that is Star, which is why she prefers Marco. Meanwhile, Tom is losing his mind because someone else is dancing with the girl he is very much not dating. That dance was meant for me. Look, I'm not saying Tom was going to murder Marco here, but I'm also not ruling out that possibility. He's a three-eyed, lavender-skinned powder keg with a lighter taped on top. We never actually see Tom before Star broke up with him, but odds are all these problems were probably already there. We are seeing him at his continual lowest points. And then we see him learn to not be this. And thankfully, the show moves on to him learning the lesson pretty quickly, because Tom's next plan does legitimately break Star's will to live. Whoa. Oh, hey Marco. Tom hires a guy to infiltrate Star's school, pose as a guidance counselor and spy on her. The goal is to convince Star that she should start focusing on becoming a queen, and that would require her to find a king, and he's also having this grown-ass man fish her details about her relationship with Marco. Because it's not enough that she's rejected him, Tom also convinced himself that this must be about another guy. And of course, it's Marco, and while that may end up being true, the situation at this moment is one that Tom has completely made up in his own head. And this is where we get to see the real reason Tom and Marco had so much momentum as a ship. Yes, every fandom is going to produce just one gay couple. That's just the rules, since every fandom lives in the house that the early alphabet mafia built. With Trekkies. But what really sells this one is that all of Tom's early episodes has Tom and Marco's dynamic being more interesting than Tom trying to just get Star back. At the dance, Tom ignores Star and gets mad at her. In school, he manipulates her with a proxy. In both cases, he is just being shitty, but Star is so thoroughly over him that none of it actually works. Which means all the animosity, all the tension, all the potential enemies to lovers fanfic fuel gets redirected to Marco. I knew you weren't a guidance counselor. From Tom's perspective, Marco is the one who ruined the Blood Moon ball. And when Tom tries to manipulate Star again, it's Marco who figures out what's going on, rage baiting the devil into outing himself. Marco does get taken hostage, and it's Marco who somehow managed to talk Tom out of his own dumbass plan. Mainly by pointing out how he's actually hurting Star more than anything else. And for the first time, Tom realizes his plan is going somewhere he didn't predict, and that there are actual consequences now for someone he does genuinely care about. Unlike the boy who he is trying to kill. Ha-yah! Oh! Ah! Now again, Marco and Tom are already going to get a rivalry romance thing just on these interactions alone. The fact that Tom seemingly had a genuine hatred for Marco, but is also weirdly willing to listen to him, it's basically fanfic fertilizer. But what I like about the canon story is that it all builds up Tom to be misguided, rather than being just a prick. He wants his girl back, but after two failed attempts, Tom just drops the plan entirely, comes clean, he apologizes, and he gets punched for it as he deserves. And he just actually commits to getting his life together. He ramps up his anger management sessions, and we see him just drop off the face of the Earth, and when he does return, it naturally leads us right back to Marco and Tom. Actually, I was wondering if we could hang out. I meant with Marco. Huh? Because of course it does, even though he is lying. All he had to do was spend three hours alone with the person he hated the most. Tom didn't reach out because he healed, he's doing it so he can graduate anger management by spending a required amount of time with the person he hates the most. That one probably stings, but buried beneath all the lies and the false hope this episode may have gave 12-year-olds everywhere. The outcome is actually pretty optimistic. Despite faking interest in Marco's favorite movies, despite lying through his teeth about what's going on, the two end up genuinely bonding. They realize they have way more in common than just being collateral damage to Star Butterfly's everything. They're both massive fans of an unseen knockoff, which makes Marco feel betrayed when he finds out that Tom still has been pulling underhanded bullshit. Marco rage quits the hangout and Tom, trying to save the friendship he didn't realize he wanted, does, and I swear I'm not making this up, sings him a duet. Nothing could tear us apart. It'll too late. Whoo, whoo, whoo. Honestly, fair. From Marco's perspective, Tom is a demon stuck in a moral seesaw. He does something bad, learns his lesson, then unlearns it 20 minutes later. The speeches have worn thin, his actions have spoken, which leaves Tom with only one remaining option. A good old-fashioned bribe. Tom resurrects Marco's idol, and somehow this is enough to make them friends. Because, you know, team boys, and they'll still try to deny it. Still don't like you, Tom. I still don't like you, too, Marco. After this, Tom disappears, until it's maximally inconvenient for the plot to bring him back. But to summarize both the shipping and the actual writing situation, Tom starts as someone we expect to hate. Become someone who is clearly more misguided than malicious, tries and fails to unlearn his worst tendencies, to developing a jealousy fueled grudge, and then, over time, becomes a genuine friend. Not to get Star back, but because he actually cares and is concerned about the feelings of others. And this is the key thing. Tom's original goal is Star, but he consistently ends up interacting with Marco more. Marco, who I think is still a teenager at this time, becomes the grounding force, the reality check, the person who actually calls the Prince of basically Hell on his bullshit. I wouldn't call it full on shipping fuel outside of the duet, which is objectively goofy and adorable. But the story lays just enough groundwork for fans to take the ball and sprint with it. Add depth to the friendship, layer on the romantic tension. This world is the fandom's oyster. And the weird part, this dynamic is left hanging a suspiciously long time. Tom is just kind of not around, the other characters deal with much bigger lizard-like things, with them only popping up really to say, oh yeah, sorry Marco, I put a curse on you that only activated when you try to confess to a different girl. Despite that focus, despite all this development, the show eventually reminded us that, yes, Tom used to date Star, and it has them get back together. You two have got to be kidding me.
[15:49]Now I'm not the biggest fan of drawn out agonizing will they, won't they romances. They're great for building investment until they're not. There's always going to be a tipping point for these things about where anticipation just turns and melts actually just rots into frustration. But for me, Starco soured the second Star and Tom got back together. Because it became painfully, obviously clear that Tom and Star weren't in a relationship. They were in a delay tactic, a narrative speed bump designed to keep Marco and Star apart for longer. And in this case, till the end of the series. At this point, Marco is dating Jackie, and that relationship that he has spent seasons working towards lasted until the exact second after Tom and Star become a couple. Star is taken off the board, and we are sentenced to two full seasons of waiting while the show keeps trying to stir the pot in increasingly artificial ways. Like having Star and Marco cheat. Not because of feelings, not because of character growth, but because of a creepy goblin locking them in a photo booth and refusing to let them out until they smooch. Where despite not knowing them, he decided that this is what they needed. This happens while Star is dating Tom, which creates a secret between all three of them, and one that has complicated by the fact that Star had previously said that she was in love with Marco. And it's just weird, awful even. It really fucks up the group dynamic we had between Star and Marco before this, and I said it once, and I'll say it again. Early them, they felt like partners in crime. After season two, it starts to feel like they're doing a crime. And the fallout from like all of this drama is only ever okay, polite, but not especially engaging. Marco does confess to Tom what happened, but he takes it as a lie, only until he learns, oh, he was actually telling the truth. I, I really did kiss Star. Oh, well, it's too late now. And it just, ugh, it just feels like they're milking the drama for all it's worth, and none of it is really hitting, because outside of like individual episodes, it never feels like we're really progressing the characters in a meaningful way through it. Especially since, if the show had said, fuck it, they're Polly, I think most people would have shrugged and gone, yeah, that sounds about right. Star would absolutely have hoes. But instead, everything is left in this weird limbo where nothing feels good. Tom and Star are dating, Marco, who is clearly still in love with Star is now living with her, and they're hanging out every day, going on adventures together while Star is trying to resolve racism. Meanwhile, Tom only pops up occasionally, making him feel like a guest star in his own girlfriend's life. Oh, and Marco is also kind of seeing a different girl during most of this, and I'm not anti-girls can have platonic male best friends. But when one of them is obviously in love with her, and she openly declared her love for him, and they were literally forced to kiss by Alex Hirsch, it starts to beg the question. What the fuck are we even doing here? When are we going to acknowledge the multiple elephants in the room, and how long are we going to keep pretending that Tom isn't the third wheel? As we all know who Endgame is anyway. Which makes all the development we get between Star and Tom to feel hollow. It's Kane that Tom initially is apathetic to Star's crusade to dismantle systemic racism. He does learn to care, though, but he's never invested in the day-to-day struggles the way Marco is. Who, even on the account of how he treats Star, Marco is saying he's being a bad boyfriend. And while these ideas of Tom learning to like be a little bit better in different ways is okay, the relationship is so clearly doomed. It's basically cruel. And despite them learning about the whole kissing situation, they inexplicably stay together for another season. Sorry, you're right, Tom. You're not stupid. You never said I was stupid. Well, not out loud. And this is where we get to the thing that happens in a lot of fandoms. As you see, when the main couple starts to drag, or outright suck, people start looking for alternatives. Not just crack ships, but legitimate options. And weirdly enough, despite Tom getting the short end of the stick by the narrative, Tom Star started getting refrained as the more subversive and therefore better pairing by fans. The logic being that we have had decades of female leads ending up with their male best friends. Maybe it would be better if Star and Marco just stayed friends. The Blood Moon could have been a literal curse, explaining why the universe kept pushing them together, and it's just broken. And they still have feelings. Also, again, Kelly and Marco broke up off screen, so at this point, Starco truly felt inevitable. And as that inevitability set in, one pairing quietly rose to be the one option we had left. The one thing that could possibly derail Starco from being what we all knew it was going to be. It was also one of my favorite options. How sad is that? My breakup buddy broke up with me. Because since we got rid of Kelly, Tomco became my runner up. Yes, there's no way to get around the fact that Marco is technically a 50 plus year old man trapped in a teen's body. So let's make like the show and just ignore it entirely. Tom and Marco for me were simply the more fun option. Not even strictly on an enemies to lovers angle, just because the story clearly had more room to explore them, and because spite. Star is tied up with the bigger plot. Her love life actively gets in the way of the more interesting things she's dealing with, which is why it's always a breath of fresh air when she ditches the boys entirely to dive into the lore of the Butterfly family. Leaving a weird period where Tom and Marco felt like they could be better friends than Starco was at the time. When Star and Marco were being awkward about whatever secret they were ashamed of that week, there was still this lingering issue that Star was clearly prioritizing having fun with Marco, and ignoring the boyfriend who is actively trying to be in her life. And after a certain point, you just lose investment, and it starts being clear that this just doesn't matter. Leaving both relationships to suffer from it, as neither can move forward, and they're both being made weird by elements of the story dragging it out. Confused teens is, yeah, typical. They would do this shit. But when the story is trying to do all these other bigger, more complex ideas, to give space with all of this drama, did start to great. With the only solace in this situation being, well, fanfiction. And in this case, Tom and Marco's friendship, because up until this point, we had actually gone on a journey with them together. One that didn't carry the same narrative strain as every other potential pairing. There's no sense of moral dirt with Tom and Marco becoming a thing. No feeling that they're together because the plot wants to stall once the kiss nonsense is off the table. There's allowed to be bros being bros. Sing duets to buy star time, being goofy, existing without this weight of inevitability hanging over their heads. Creating a sense of resistance that to ship them is to say, fuck the bad writing, please give us anything else. Tom starts as a misguided hot head who slowly learns to be better. His redemption, if you want to call it that, is actually a pretty more grounded take on just a troubled teen learning to be less bad. Marco, for how lost and annoying him finding for Star has been for two seasons, having him be able to break the Blood Moon curse and move on from this. To actually go back to supporting Star for what feels like true genuine friend reasons versus, ugh. It all makes Tomco feel like the easy solution that could fix all the problems, even if that's not really true. This is just pining. A hope for like, oh, if they do this crazy thing, it'll fix everything. Similar to how a minority of Stranger Things fans thought there was going to be a secret finale to save their fucking show.
