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firelxdykatara · 5 years

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This is for the ask meme, but how about top 5 underrated characters or movies? (also your blog has easily become one of my favs, thank you for existing and for your excellent commentary/takes!!!

kjfdgkdjfg well thank you! i’m glad you enjoy my ramblings

TOP 5 UNDERRATED CHARACTERS: UHMMM this is hard, cause some characters are underrated by the show but loved by the fandom, and sometimes the opposite, but these are the ones that come to mind:

1. Tyler Lockwood, from The Vampire Diaries. In the first two seasons of the show, he had a pretty fantastic ‘jerkass jock to decent human being’ character arc, and his relationship with Caroline was beautiful to watch. In season 3 Forwood lost all of the emotional depth it’d had and became almost entirely about sex, and then Tyler got put through the absolute ringer and then... kind of vanished? He came back every once in a while to get shit on by everyone (I will never not be pissed that Stefan punched him in the face for daring to be upset that the woman he loved had slept with the man who murdered his mother and slaughtered his pack--he had every right not to want to be around her after that, and to get upset when she refused to back off), and then got unceremoniously killed at some point, I think over on The Originals. I don’t know, cause I stopped watching TVD after season 6. Anyway, Tyler Lockwood deserved better, and that is that on that.

2. Wells Jaha from The 100. It’s been, what, five years since season 1 of that show? And I’m still fucking pissed about the way Wells was unceremoniously killed off in the third episode, and barely referenced again. After having been Clarke’s best friend for most of her life. Meanwhile, the ghost of Lexa, Clarke’s two-week fuck buddy (god, ok, before anyone comes to yell at me, I’m sure they were in love and it was longer than two weeks, whatever, I never cared for the relationship and I didn’t buy it in the slightest) has been haunting the show ever since she died, turning up every season like a bad fucking penny. But Wells who????

3. Alistair Theirin from Dragon Age. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of the fandom loves him, but I see a lot of that love centering on like... cheese jokes and ‘lol he’d be a terrible king he’s a fuckin dork’ and like, I get it, but also??? This man has been through some shit. He was abandoned by his mother, his father dumped him on Arl Eamon’s doorstep where he grew up feeling lonely and unwanted because Eamon’s wife thought he was Eamon’s illegitimate son and treated him like trash because that’s the kid’s fault of course, then he was shipped off to the Chantry because said wife was sick of having to look at him--and he didn’t even fit in there, it wasn’t until he joined the Grey Wardens that he finally felt like he had a place in the world, and he had a family he loved, and he lost literally all of them. Including the man he’d grown to care for as the father figure he’d desperately wanted all his life. And it of course depends on the choices made, but Alistair can be a damn good king if given the chance, and sometimes I get tired of people acting like he’s some helpless fop who exists to be the butt of jokes.

4. Clint Barton from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’m sure I don’t have to go into detail regarding how he was criminally underutilized from the very beginning--he was taken out of half the action of The Avengers via brainwashing, and it only got worse from there. A family was dropped on him out of nowhere, effectively cutting off any potential development and growth he had via any other relationships. And all of that aside, there is a wealth of potential characterization and personality in the comics that MCU!Clint just... doesn’t get. There are glimpses of it, and Jeremy Renner absolutely could’ve pulled it off.... but nope. And I don’t even want to get into what Endgame did to him. But basically, he was written off as the ‘boring human’ (where even Nat got to be The Gorgeous Superspy) from the start, and just... never got to grow beyond that. And it was incredibly frustrating to watch.

5. Luther Hargreeves from The Umbrella Acadmy. I’m still mad about the way the fandom treated Luther and his trauma vs how they treated Vanya’s (and there are exceptions on both sides but you still can’t throw a stone in the general tags without seeing some anti luther crap), and how it’s totally ok and understandable that Vanya slit her own sister’s throat because she couldn’t control her emotions or her powers, but Luther was evil incarnate for believing she was dangerous and trying to keep her contained until they could figure out how to help her without risking her destroying the planet (remembering that he had no way of knowing what a trigger that room would be for her). Anyway, Luther deserves better and I hope season 2 treats him well.

TOP FIVE UNDERRATED MOVIES: Probably won’t get as detailed here but!

1. Aquamarine. I actually wrote a post a while back about this movie cause it’s??? So good??? And such an amazing take on how love is important in all forms, not just romantic, which is pretty rare for a romcom, and I just really love it.

2. George of the Jungle. There’s a post floating around out there about why this is such a great movie, and how it flipped the ‘sexy/objectified female love interest’ trope on its head, but I don’t see this movie talked about enough and it should be. (The first time I saw this movie, I was six years old, it had just come out on VHS, and my father laughed so hard he fell off the fucking couch. It was the kind of thing that can only happen once, the first time, because after that you know it’s coming, but it’s still great on rewatch and I just. It’s such a good fucking movie ok.)

3. Sky High. Why isn’t there more of a fandom for this movie. It was great, and I’m still mad it didn’t get a sequel yes I still ship layla/warren don’t judge me, but it had so many great comedic beats and had a great take on superhero school and breaking down the superhero/sidekick dichotomy and they’re still teenagers with teenage problems but that won’t stop them from saving the day. And also Ron Wilson, Bus Driver, was absolutely fucking priceless.

4. Cinderella (2015). In fact, Cinderella herself routinely gets a lot of flak just in general, I guess because people can’t understand why someone in her position wouldn’t just stand up to their abusers and leave (and where the fuck would she even go?? it’s not like she had anyone she could trust to take her in, and being treated like a servant in her own home was better than starving in the cold), but I just... love so much that the live action remake focuses on her kindness and her courage and just... Have courage, and be kind, and she offers forgiveness to the Lady Tremaine, even if she didn’t deserve it and wouldn’t take it, because that’s who Ella always was. There was no room in her heart for anger and bitterness, and that’s not to say that anyone who is angry at their abusers is wrong for it, but that’s not the only way to cope. And Ella got her happy ending because she never stopped being true to herself, and it’s just. So very beautiful.

5. Enchanted. It was a really cute movie but also a great look at the typical Disney Princess formula and turning it on its head while still showing such a deep love for the source of that formula and I just love it so much. Plus Patrick Dempsey. A+++

#underrated characters #underrated movies #ask meme #syques #asked

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jazzywazzy89 · 5 years

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Okay, I’ve read the last chapter of TLTBILB like 5x and I’m still dying over the fact that not only is Tyler the most perfect boyfriend in the world. BUT, that he also wrote letters to Hayley about Bonnie. The fact that Bonnie is the only person who doesn’t realize how much Tyler loves her, is killing me softly. & how freaking cute & soft Jeremey is?? Like I hate him in canon, but he’s so cute in this fic. Alright imma go now, I just wanted you to know I’m obsessed with your fics! Your amazing❤️

Hey anon!

Gotta admit that TATBILB is just the most fun for me to write right now of all my fics. I have always had a major soft spot for Tonnie and honestly they were one of my earliest TVD ships when I first started watching the show before Klaus showed up and I became Klonnie obsessed. They just had so much potential to be great and I was salty that after all that BS that JP talked about not wanting to do a Oz/Willow redux (even though she had no issues with stealing literally everything else from BtVS) she put Tyler with a witch in later seasons anyway, one that just so happened to be another one of JP’s blonde self inserts.

Anyway back to the fic, I just love combining the story lines into the TVD-verse and I think it fits the characters so well. I love writing Oblivious!Bonnie and the whole idea of the fake dating trope and the seemingly unrequited love trope. Literally Tyler is the epitome of this gif…

And Bonnie just does not get it! Lol The journey with these two is definitely going to be a fun one and we are going to see Stefan and Vicki add some friction in the upcoming chapters.

Jeremy….oh sweet Jeremy. I honestly feel like I would have loved him on the show if they wrote him as Elena’s little brother that’s just trying to find his place which they kind of did but then they put him in these random pairings and try to force his relevancy to the plot in all the wrong ways and wrote him so annoying so I was over him fairly quickly.I would have liked Beremy interacting better as just friends because their chemistry was flat for me on the show and their relationship was poorly written and executed and I was hoping for they would go the bisexual route with Jere just for diversity and to be real he even had more chemistry with Tyler than he did with Bonnie. I liked Jyler dynamic and wanted it to turn into something when it first became a thing on the show which is why I have them paired together in Shades of Pink. But the Jyler chem is a convo for another post.

Honestly, Bonnie had more chemistry with Tyler onscreen with just shared looks and the whole thing was just a waste because they had a fairly active fanbase for a while even with them not interacting onscreen hardly ever, which should tell you something. The witch/wolf lore also had so many possibilities, especially if Tyler was written as a canon character of color under the right pen as the mythology there is plentiful and especially if Bonnie’ heritage and background was given the story arc it deserved and not mentioned in passing and used a plot device. That’s why I love writing the pairing!

Writing them all human is different though. I like the idea of them being regular teenagers with ordinary problems and with a romcom plot. In spite of them being in high school the first few seasons, we didn’t get to see it a lot on the show, especially with Tyler and Bonnie because they were sidelined, and Bonnie was a plot device. A lot of their normal teenage moments were filtered through their pairings at the time, Beremy and Forwood. While TATBILB is heavy on romance and they do develop a lot as a couple, they are rebuilding a friendship as well, exploring a shared history that I feel like should have been explored with all the original base characters of the show because it would have made all of their moments of danger and heartbreak and their lives being disrupted by the supernatural that much more poignant.

Bonnie and Tyler are also developing as individuals, particularly Bonnie in this fic. A lot of her wanting to stay in her comfort zone in the fic is fear based, which she doesn’t fully understand. I think its less about being in Elena’s shadow, and more about finally being around people that the are encouraging her to break out of that comfort zone and try new things, hang out with different people, and revealing more of herself to others and she gets that not just from Tyler, but from Jeremy, from Luka, from Caroline, and others as the story goes along. Because Elena may have been her friend but Elena was also her enabler and I feel like in terms of their friendship Bonnie staying in her comfort zone was encouraged by Elena because having her friend by her side all the time was something that was a part of Elena’s comfort zone. Bonnie isn’t just leaving her comfort zone though, its more like she’s expanding it and inviting other people into it and learning more about what she’s capable of and how people really see her. A reviewer put it well when they said that she’s been casting herself as the side character all along and she’s always been the lead and that’s exactly the point and what she’s realizing.

I think the girl’s being separated and Elena being off on her own where she’s not someone everyone knows and she’s not the center of attention and she doesn’t have people willing to bend over backwards to do what she wants and with the people she was closest to, like Jeremy and Stefan, getting closer to Bonnie in her absence and Bonnie experiencing so much that Elena won’t know about fully until she sees her again, no matter how many phone calls they make, it’ll be interesting when they finally reunite, which won’t be for a while yet.

As far as Tyler’s development, I’d like to think that his relationship with Bonnie will allow more people to see who he really is at heart, which is a good person who is very intense and angry at times but goes hard for the people who he loves.The show started to do that with Forwood which is why I liked them at first but they put him in too much of a box and didn’t allow him to interact with enough others and then his development lost its impact and he was sacrificed on the altar of KC and things just went pear shaped from there.

As far as the fic goes, I think that Tyler is still Tyler but he just allows himself to show certain sides of himself to people he cares about, people he trusts. He showed that side to Bonnie before and he’s able to do that again after so long. He can be a jerk and an asshole but that’s not all he is. There are people who know this, Matt, Hayley, Caroline and his family but it isn’t widely known and I feel like when people witness the connection with him and Bonnie it’s something that is very evident and something that made Bonnie fall for him in the first place when they were younger. You’ll also get to see where a lot of his anger comes from in the upcoming chapters and Hayley does reveal more to Bonnie about what Tyler’s letter’s said in later chapters as well. I want to have Tyler be kind of the inverse of the jock stereotype, because he has this image he puts on and this persona he wears that kind of melts off when he’s around Bonnie. Vicki will definitely take notice of this as well and there is going to be a lot of juxtaposition between those relationships and the way he is with each of them and the way that they are with him. Even though this is “fake” he isn’t used to someone as genuine as Bonnie and it makes sense for him to be all in. But Tyler has his own insecurities and Stefan’s presence doesn’t help them at all so we’ll see how it goes. It doesn’t help that while Tyler is familiar with Bonnie in the way she was before, she’s a little harder for him to read now because they haven’t interacted in a while. At times he has fun figuring her out but at other times its frustrating and while Stefan has been in the dog house so to speak, you get to see how easy it is for them to read each other and while its a different dynamic its one that Tyler is threatened by in a lot of ways.

This answer got really long but I am so glad that you are enjoying the fic!😊 As you can see I love writing it and am super passionate about where its going so I do hope you stay for the ride anon! Thanks for reading! Lots of love your way! 💕

#bonnie bennett #tyler lockwood #tyler x bonnie #bonnie x tyler #fanfic au #anons #replies #i love this fic man #i really love writing #you guys don't even know

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wrongeddeadthenevermourned · 4 years

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Character Development Asks: Whump Edition

- Who is the first person your character calls for help when they’re too sick to cope on their own?

The only person Kai has ever called out for was basically NO one because he relies on himself alone, don’t fool yourself lol. He trusts NO one. As much as no one trusts him.

- Who would be the first to notice that your character is hurt? Who would be the first to make it to their side?

Kai would notice he’s hurt first. Only time anyone else has ever noticed he was hurt, is if it had benefited them. Look at the episode where Olivia fucking stabs him right through his entire midsection for your clue in.

- Who would your character take a beating for?

Bonnie. Mister Kai “I was stabbed through the entire middle of my body, but I am going to save Bonnie so she can stop suffering the same shit I went through, not that anyone cares about that part but at least I am helping to save Bonnie.” Parker.

- What injury or sickness would be enough to make your character break down crying?

Look, Kai hasn’t cried since he was a fucking child. Not realistically, -Pushes the scene where he’s explaining Luke’s feelings and his apparently bawling somewhere in private, away- Since his merge with Luke is glossed over, let’s talk about it for a minute. He finally was able to feel all the hurt and pain he brought everyone and that hit him, fucking hard, right in his psyche. But he viewed the entire event, as, basically silly. So he glosses over it and no one else asks him any further about it. Because I guess Luke’s feelings no longer matter? Or Kai’s new found feelings, don’t matter. Fuck Kai, amiright?! -Rolls eyes- I’m sure he has also had a bit of a cry session over just being sick because of the Merge with Luke and vomiting up blood, must have been painful. Is sure as hell looked a little like it was. Could of also been the damage from being STABBED IN THE STOMACH.

- What injury or sickness would your character be most squeamish about?

None. He has not ability to process the realizations of such things in front of him. To him they are ‘normal’ occurrences. Perhaps because of his childhood of abuse.

- What injury or sickness would traumatize your character most if it happened?

Probably the fact that he’s a sociopath and as he was growing up and becoming one he was starting to recognize the numbness to life and others around him. Which might have been pretty terrifying to realize something you had once felt, you can no longer feel without dissolving into another phase of being or being so filled with rage because of what has made him so numb and lead to his sociopathic nature traumatized him in the first place.

- Where is the most vulnerable spot on your character’s body?

Probably his torso. I mean, how many times is someone going to stop him like that. Or his neck. Beheading him usually stops him. lol.

- Where are your character’s ugliest scars?

Probably on his torso. Though he canonically can’t scar anymore. I however wish to keep the damage done to him in some form. So there IS scaring. So his most ugliest scars are the ones from when he has tried to kill himself and where others have tried to kill him/killed him. There’s a thin line to the left of his neck and scratching/tearing to the right. His stomach has a light hole in the sternum from the pick axe, a small sliver on his back from Olivia, another sliver in his right back side and right leg and such from Bonnie attacking him. A gunshot scar in his right front side of his torso, well, several. Teeth marks around the sword scar of his neck on his left side. Faint cut scars on the left side of his forehead, near the hairline. Another faint stab scar just above the one created by the sword. Some faint scars along his arms and other spots of random impact damage to the body. Re-healed cracks in his bones. All these have remained, for something to reflect on in threads.

- Where is your character most comfortable when they’re recovering from an injury?

Pfft, Probably Prison World to be honest, at least he’s safest there. Even if Alaric sends some rotten teenagers there and probably got killed a few times before manipulating the dumb fuckers into aligning with him. Dumbasses.

- When sick or injured, how long does it take for others to convince your character to be treated?

No one cares if Kai is injured. Kai doesn’t even really care when he’s injured. Well, maybe a tiny bit, but he will also just brush it off. Like when Olivia stabbed him, and he decided “ I have a hole in my entire mid section. But let’s bring Bonnie HOME~ Quickly, yeah?” Before almost dying. Who knows what happened after THAT moment. I can speculate that ones drinking Damon’s blood and him helping them they told him to scoot and he left to go hide in a bush for a while. Because TVD didn’t really do anything with him after that for a while.

- When would your character finally admit that they’re under the weather? Do they beat around the bush or say it outright?

Kai ran to Josette for help, despite her clearly not being amused with him. And feeling ill anyway. He still felt/knew, he needed her then when he was vomiting up blood. Of course this was also followed by her throwing him at a wall, and him even confessing that he needed her around. As well, he was no longer a threat to anyone at that time. But still, this is probably the best instant of his finally relenting and going to someone for his needs. And they deleted most of that fucking scene. The dirty bastards.

- When faced with a situation that is guaranteed to get them hurt, does your character hesitate or rush headlong into it anyway?

Kai rushes in headlong, I am fairly certain of this. Because when Kai wants something, he will literally kill himself to get it if he has to. Again we can go back to Bonnie being saved by Kai. Or Kai most recently ‘fighting’ Hope in order to find something. Then as Alaric came to chop his god damn head off he looked so ...blase about it. Death doesn’t scare him. But you gotta ask the question as to why. The why is because he spent eighteen years committing suicide and GOD knows how many times he might have done it in the other prison.

- How quickly would your character break under torture?

He probably has a very high tolerance to any such tactic after spending most of his life in isolation. Which is the most torturous thing that can realistically be done to another human being without physically or mentally assaulting them, but is just as detrimental to the psyche of a person. Add on perhaps twenty two years of whatever in the fuck Joshua and the other members of the coven and his family might have added to. There’s clearly nothing anyone can do to Break Kai, unless other measure’s were taken first. Kai is literally the greatest stronghold. His metaphorical walls are absolutely formidable. Nothing really gets in, and nothing really gets out. He’ll literally just laugh at any attempt, or manipulate you.

- How well would your character serve as a caretaker to someone who is sick or injured? How good is their bedside manner?

Hmm, well, When Kai and Bonnie were trapped in the Prison World. Despite the fact that Kai was doing it for a reason. He was very hospitable to her. Had she not been fucking hostile and stupid, he might have even taken her out with him. But hey, it’s whatever. Kai made her food, served it to her, unpoisoned. Tried to have conversation with her. Even helped to fix the ascendant with her. He kept her in his company, despite his well being over having such, himself. Even if there was an ulterior motive underneath all of it, getting out of the Prison World. He also didn’t have to GO that far. Since he never even needed her to get out in the first god damn place, despite her blood. Which he had just been dripping all over the damn place. It could even be argued that he was dragging it all out, to be more agonizing toward her.

But nah, I think he just was wanting to enjoy the company, and despite his other plans, because clearly the woman was hostile and he definitely is smart enough to see she would screw him over again, he still hung around the entire time. Trying to provide his version of comfort with a nice home cooked meal, he made, for her. On his favorite holiday. THANKSGIVING! - throws up hands- The villain has a better heart than the main characters and his entire family and it’s just glossed over because he killed a few family members who are probably just as terrible as Joshua themselves AND on top of that the rest of the entire main cast, who even WHILE THIS WAS GOING ON, one of them was out going on some murder spree venture because he wanted to. #KaiDeservesTheBestRedemptionArcAU, lol.

- How much pain would it take for your character to lose consciousness? Is it a slow fade or a sudden plunge into darkness?

Well it’s a little bit of both. Depending on where you stab him. Sometimes he’s just very chill where he’s injured, despite blood loss or injury to the head he’s very mellow. Or if you put and axe in his sternum, he passes out almost instantly and dies. Huh. Funny, that.

- Does your character ever hide their injuries or try to treat them on their own? Why do they think they have to do this?

Kai doesn’t hide his injuries. They are just ignored and so he is able to go about bleeding all over everyone’s property as he please. Because fuck you and your fancy ass couch, Damon. You like you wood floors? Well fuck those too. Kai generally will provide aid to himself and why he thinks he has to do that is because no one else cares if he’s hurt. They literally shot him in the shoulder with an arrow one time, and instead of patching that up, put him in a coma in the fucking kitchen or wherever, where someone tried to kill him. But was stopped because he was ‘needed’ like, don’t fucking touch me. Who the fuck do any of these characters think they are? Break all their neck Kai, damn...lol.

- Does your character ever exaggerate their injuries to get more sympathy or affection? Does their caretaker fall for it?

No, Kai doesn’t exaggerate much things like this. For he even understands when it’s serious. Despite his playfulness. He still will run to family when he’s vomiting up blood, first, for help. He couldn’t care less about what they feel about it. Because he expects nothing, and honestly gets nothing. In the deleted scene that is essential to his ‘growth’ in character. We see him finally pull down the veil, in front of Josette. Where she then accuses him of being a liar and then proceeds to throw him into a wall. He doesn’t want, or need no sympathy from any of these people. And he learned from a very young age to not need it from these people.

- Does your character blame themself when someone they care about is hurt?

Fuck no. Perhaps in his earliest childhood, he didn’t like when others had been hurt. It is important to understand that Kai, as a child, was very different from Kai as an adult, the result of life long abuse who finally snapped when he was twenty two. As a boy I am sure he was much more receptive to other peoples injuries. Say if Josette had fallen and scrapped her knee, he more than likely would have been on the front line to see to it that the injury was fixed. Kai as an adult stabs her, while she pregnant and kills her. The gravity of differences is that Josette has contributed to the same abuse that resulted in his fracture. Josette is no longer ‘needing’ protection from harm. She to him has no become the harmer. And so to had every other single family member he had killed prior. Kai HAD loved them all, at one point. Then the dam broke, and instead of seeing the people he loved. He saw the people in his way, the people who abused him. So he doesn’t blame himself for murdering them, or bringing them harm. Because to him, they were just as happy to let him die, to let him suffer, as he was to be rid of them. To finally be free, and allowed to live.

- Could your character stay still long enough for an injury to heal or do they try to go about their business despite it?

Kai may not plan things precisely. So when they do fall apart and he is injured and if he were offered help in healing, he will take it. He’s not that ungrateful. He’s willing to play along to get what he needs, when it is needed. However, in the event that no one offers him to heal or he is injured while in the ‘thick’ of whatever he’s doing, he will just keep going on, business as usual like, because he has things he needs to do and that matter more to him than self care, usually.

- Could your character push through an injury long enough to complete a vital task or mission?

Oh definitely. He absolutely is a glutton for pain, and will keep persisting till he is killed off or done with what he had needed to do, or eliminated the threat.

- Could your character find the strength/willpower to survive what could be a fatal wound?

Yes. Definitely. After all, he was stabbed by Olivia, while still human, and willed himself through that, full knowing he could die. Even saying as much to everyone else, but decided to help them regardless because Kai, with Luke’s empathy of course, Not entirely BECAUSE of it, did want to be close to those people. And had risked his life to do so, for Bonnie, as well. Kai is pretty resilient honestly. But he has to want to be, otherwise he could easily just be fine with taking a dirt nap. Because he has no feeling toward a necessity to survive, nor a total fear of death.

#KaiInformation

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firelxdykatara · 3 years

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Reader anon here with a thought!

Do you like love triangles? I personally don't, there is something about them that is incredibly frustrating lol. Same thing for harems, though there are some that do it tastefully 😌 so I can't be too upset by them.

It honestly depends on the love triangle and the way the author writes all three relationships (and, for any genuine love triangle, there should be three relationships--they don't all need to be romantic, but there needs to be an existing and strong relationship between all three points on the triangle, otherwise I'm almost certain not to be at all invested), how they are presented, and what the narrative purpose of the love triangle is.

Ironically, one of the best examples of a love triangle done well (at least... to a certain point in the story, which I'll explain in a bit) happened in a television show that is fairly notorious for turning to utter shit in the latter four seasons and alienating pretty much the entire fanbase, to the point where most of us dipped well before the end and everyone celebrated news of the show's cancellation.

I'm talking about The Vampire Diaries.

(under a cut because i went on a LOOOONG ramble about tvd and why that love triangle worked initially and then why it failed, and then i talked a bit about another love triangle that was pretty weak and failed almost from the outset in OUAT but was ultimately axed in favor of the stronger relationship and character being given focus, and what all of this means for how i feel about love triangles in general)

While this is still very much a case where I only shipped one side of the triangle, hated the other, and couldn't wait for it to be resolved so that I wouldn't have to deal with the side I disliked any longer (the writing was on the wall as far back as season 1, no matter how in denial a certain portion of the fandom remained right up until the series finale) the development of the triangle itself and how it affected all three characters and their relationships with one another was done very well for most of the first four seasons. Damon and Stefan were brothers, with a bloody and complicated history and relationship, and they both fell in love with this human girl--Stefan almost instantly, because she looked just like Katherine and he found himself... (and here I'm going to be as fair as I possibly can to him, but if you want my full anti stelena rant I have many of them prepped and ready to go) following her, at first to make sure she wasn't Katherine, and then inserting himself into her life to protect her. Damon, on the other hand, took much longer, because he was still in love with (and trying to rescue) Katherine, and so when he did fall in love with Elena, it was because of who she was, not because of some idealized 'Not Katherine' pedestal he placed her on the instant he met her.

(I swear, I swear I'm trying to be fair to Stefan, it's just very hard.)

The thing is, Elena was in love with Stefan almost from the jump. (And one of the reasons I never really shipped stelena is because that kind of insta-love with very little conflict that isn't manufactured by the plot just isn't compelling for me, and I fully jumped ship about halfway through s1 when Damon and Elena took a road trip together. It's a long story, but that remains one of my favorite episodes in the entire show and it marks the beginning of their actual journey together.) Stefan showed up at a time when she desperately needed someone, and to his credit he did help her through her early depressive spiral--in large part because Elena's recent trauma (survivor's guilt due to her parents dying in a car crash from which she was the only survivor) meant that finding out Stefan was immortal and could not die and would not leave her resulted in her getting fiercely attached.

He was safe, he was stable, she could rely on him. But she could not grow with him, because for him, she was essentially a morality pet/the anchor to his humanity, and that meant that he could not accept when she began to grow out of her need for him. The fact that this coincided with her becoming a vampire only made things worse--because she settled into being a vampire much more easily with far less strife than he'd ever managed, and an Elena who enjoyed being a vampire in ways Stefan simply couldn't could no longer function as the idealized reminder of humanity he was desperate to cling to.

Damon, on the other hand, was the one who fell in love with Elena--not Not Katherine. He never put her on a pedestal, he never asked more of her than she could give him--when he realized how deep his feelings for her ran, he made her forget his confession because he knew he did not deserve her and he didn't want her burdened with his feelings when she was still in love with his brother and was always going to be. Elena's growing feelings for Damon coincided with her growth from a depressed and suicidal teenage girl into a young woman who began to realize that it was ok to want things for herself--to be a little selfish, to take what she wanted, to admit what she wanted. And, again, the fact that this coincided with her transformation into a vampire (although her growth within her relationship with Damon began well before that), meant that Damon's reaction to Elena-as-a-vampire was thrown into sharp relief against Stefan's--because he accepted her where his brother couldn't.

Ultimately, this led to Elena fully outgrowing her feelings for Stefan, and accepting, nurturing, and reveling in her feelings for Damon. The triangle was resolved, all three characters had growth separately and in their different relationships, and they could then move on from there along their different paths. Stefan could have had some truly excellent character growth involving moving on and finally living for himself rather than trying so hard to be this perfect brooding tortured vampire because he was the Good Brother, since there was no longer any need for that Good Brother/Bad Brother dichotomy. They'd both grown past it, as characters individually and as brothers together.

Unfortunately, where TVD ultimately failed (and this coincided with the way the show utterly lost the plot in terms of storylines, character arcs and cohesiveness and became an unsalvageable mess) is in refusing to let the love triangle die.

What should have happened is that once the love triangle was resolved--Elena growing as a character and moving on from her immature first love and fully embracing her feelings, as an adult, for her much more adult relationship with Damon--they abandoned the love triangle premise and let all three characters continue to grow outside of it. Damon and Elena should have been allowed to grow together and explore their relationship, Stefan to figure out where he still fit in their lives--as Damon’s brother, and one of Elena’s closest friends who she still loved dearly even though she was no longer in love with him--and then explore relationships of his own outside their family unit as he finally began to fully move on and grow out of his own overly idealized feelings for Elena.

Instead, what wound up happening is that the stelena side of the love triangle kept being teased--probably to keep the avid stelena shipping contingent invested in the story, hoping for ‘another brother swap’ as was lampshaded in one of Nina’s final episodes before she left the show (and, indeed, many of them remained utterly convinced that stelena would be endgame, right up until the series finale)--and rather than growing together, delena fans were constantly hit over the head with how ‘toxic’ Damon and Elena were for each other (even though this ran contrary to everything we’d seen in the show to that point, including having Damon regress repeatedly for, presumably, no reason other than to never let fans forget he was the Bad Brother and always would be, and Elena just couldn’t help but love him anyway), and all three characters and their relationships wound up suffering horribly for it.

That is an example of a love triangle that had a very promising foundation and development, right up through what should have been a resolution, and the reason it is generally looked on so unfavorably in fandom circles is because the show refused to move on from the triangle organically when the story needed it to, because it had already served its purpose.

For an example of a love triangle that, in my mind, simply didn’t work from the very beginning, I’d say my go-to example is from Once Upon a Time--the short-lived love triangle between Emma, Killian, and Neal. I think the first stumbling block there was that there weren’t really three relationships that mattered. Technically, Killian did have a connection to Neal--because they’d met in Neverland, prior to Neal remaining in the Land Without magic--but it functioned more as a backdrop to explain why Killian knew him when they got to Neverland again in the story, and why Neal didn’t trust him. It wasn’t actually developed as anything outside of that brief flashback, and they didn’t have any connection in the present outside of one episode where they essentially fought over Emma and she (rightly) got angry at them for it. There was no real exploration of who they were to each other outside of the fact that both of them had feelings for Emma, so it really was just one woman torn between her feelings for two different men, and with no real stakes attached to her choice.

The other problem with this particular triangle is that one side of it was... conspicuously weak. While Emma’d had a full season and a half worth of interactions and development with Killian--where they went from enemies, to grudging allies, to Killian openly acknowledging that he hadn’t ever believed he would be able to love again until he met Emma--she had... very little to support her potential relationship with Neal outside of their history. History which consisted of then-young-adult Neal knocking up underage Emma (she was 17 at the oldest because she was still in Juvie when Henry was born, and he was already ten years old the day she turned 28; so she was either 16 or very newly 17 when she got pregnant) and ensuring that she got sent to prison for his own crime, at which point he didn’t see her again until she was nearly 30. When he did see her again, he treated her incredibly poorly, up to and including getting angry at her about the fact that she didn’t tell him that Henry was his son--even though he had no right to that information, because Emma was in prison because of him at the time she found out, and she had no clue that he was in any way connected to the Fairy Tale world until she was helping Mr. Gold track down his son and it turned out to be Neal.

A big point is made, throughout the early seasons especially, about Emma’s walls and how much difficulty she has trusting people--and a great deal of that stemmed from Neal’s betrayal. This could have been the foundation for a story of healing and growth and two people coming back together--however, with the way Neal treats Emma in the present and how little closure she actually gets for what he did to her in the past, it comes across more as ‘well, she never did get over her feelings for him, so maybe he still has a shot even though she has no real reason to want to be with him now’.

Killian, on the other hand, never doubted Emma’s abilities and always had the utmost trust in and respect for her (after they became allies), and it was obvious that this is something Emma experienced very little of in her life. It’s notable that the first episode where they really interacted is the one in which Emma’s history with Neal is revealed, and it very deliberately paralleled and contrasted with her interactions with Killian. This already presented him with a leg up on the love triangle once Neal did show up, because Neal was the reason for a lot of the walls Emma had built around her heart, and it wasn’t until meeting Killian that she finally began to let some of them down.

I think that the show recognized this, and it pulled something that is actually a very frustrating pet peeve of mine--rather than write out the story that makes sense and have the main point of the love triangle make a choice and stick to it, the third point of the triad was simply written out. In this case, Neal essentially killed himself via his own stupidity, allowing Emma to angst about losing him without actually having to tell him she wasn’t in love with him and wasn’t going to choose him. (Veronica Mars pulled something very similar with the Logan/Veronica/Duncian triangle in season 2--rather than admit within the narrative that her relationship with Duncan was built on flimsy feelings of infatuation bc of their history, and a ‘stability’ that didn’t really work for who Veronica was at her core, he simply got written out of the story, running away for Plot Reasons and never forcing Veronica to confront the fact that she wasn’t actually in love with him and hadn’t been for quite some time.)

I think that in OUaT, the love triangle could have worked if a relationship between Killian and Neal was not only established in the past but developed in the present--Killian was in love with Neal’s mother centuries earlier, and something I’m actually really upset we never got is the two of them talking about Milah and maybe Neal getting some closure for his mother’s abandonment and someone apologizing to him for what they put Baelfire through as a child--giving stakes to Emma’s choice beyond ‘one of them will be all uwu sad that he wasn’t picked’. It also would have worked much better if we were given any reason for Emma to still have feelings for Neal in the present beyond the history they shared, which caused Emma nothing but pain for the last decade and change. If Neal had treated her more fairly--if he’d treated her like someone he actually cared about and even still loved, rather than blaming her for things that were his own fault and undermining her belief in her own abilities, among other things--then their relationship might have been strong enough to stand on its own opposite Emma’s relationship with Killian. I don’t think it ever would’ve been a relationship that appealed to me, personally, but then I could have at least enjoyed watching the three of them grow together and seeing all of their relationships grow and change.

So, ultimately, TL;DR: I do like love triangles, conceptually, but there are a few requirements they must meet for me to feel anything other than irritated at the inclusion. One: there must be at least three equally important relationships between the three characters. If it’s just one character torn between her (or his, but it’s usually a woman) feelings for two unrelated people, that can be compelling for a short time but ultimately I’m going to be left feeling frustrated by her refusal to just make a damn choice and put me out of my misery. Two: there should be some sort of development in each relationship which makes the presence of the triangle narratively significant. Why is it important for one character to have conflicting romantic feelings for these two other people at the same time? What purpose does it serve either their character arcs or the story as a whole? While I am both a Bangel and a Spuffy shipper, I’ve never considered Angel/Buffy/Spike to be a love triangle--they are very different relationships that she had at very different points in her life, and while her feelings for Angel never really went away (and do cause some angst for Spike near the end of btvs) they are never really competing for her affections in any meaningful sense. If that competition does exist, there needs to be a compelling reason why. And, as a further addendum to this point, I need to at least understand why the main point of the triangle is invested in each relationship, even if I don’t ship it and actively dislike or even outright hate one side of the triangle. (I loathe stelena, but I’ve always understood why Elena was in love with him in the beginning of the show, for example. And before s5/s6, I was really pleased with how the show handled her feelings for him and finally allowed her to grow and move on from them.)

And finally, three: the triangle needs to be resolved at some point--and, when it is, it needs to stay that way. Where TVD ultimately lost me (aside from the ridiculous plot contrivances and rampant character assassination) was the refusal to let the love triangle die a natural death when it is what the story called for, and all three of their characters, their relationships, and the show as a whole suffered massively for it. So, when the primary point of the triangle makes a choice--particularly if she had made one choice in the beginning of the story, but it was clear that she was ultimately moving towards choosing the other side as she grew and her feelings and relationships grew and changed with her--let that be the end of it. Move on to exploring what that choice means for the main pair and the party not chosen, sure--maybe explore their feelings about not being chosen and how that affects their relationships with both of the others afterwards--but don’t constantly tease the possibility of the ‘losing side’ getting back together just to keep shippers invested. It’s only going to hurt your show and make everyone look callous and stupid.

Alternately, a final possibility: make it an ot3 instead. But again, if the other three conditions aren’t met (particularly number two, and its addendum; if I don’t understand why the main point of the triangle is in love with both other points, an ot3 is unlikely to resolve that issue and I’m only going to wind up resenting it), then this won’t work, because it’s just going to wind up a lopsided and stilted mess of a relationship that leaves me wishing the offending point of the triangle had been killed off just so I wouldn’t have to keep hearing about them.

#tvd #delena #anti stelena #ouat #captain swan #anti swanfire #reader anon #oh man i rambled for days lmao im sorry #i hope this answered your question #on love triangles

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