#but this isn't a negative post so i will try to forget that insect's pathetic existence

[inflammatoryfandomblog]

okay so soren and claudia’s relationship is basically the best character writing the show has, in that it stays consistently good even when the show pulls out the biggest stinkers i have ever seen. i’ve written about this waaay back so won’t go into it again. one detail i really, really wished they had managed to put into the show proper and not only the novelizations is the fact that viren healed a sickly soren when he was very young with dark magic, which in addition to putting a physical toll on him, made his ex-wife spooked out and probably contributed to their divorce.

this actually shines a lot of light on soren’s dynamic with viren. claudia tells ezran that soren immediately clung to viren when told to choose between his parents, and if viren is the one responsible for curing soren, then yeah, that makes a lot of sense. it also makes a lot of sense in terms of viren thinking that he’s owed soren’s loyalty or even his life--viren’s entire Thing is that he frequently faces bad consequences for doing what may otherwise be traditionally heroic acts, and ofc, as in the show (and especially during the events of the show as viren realizes that “all he did was for nothing”), viren *would* resent him for it. it’s completely in-character.

so soren has the double-whammy of not being able to live up to expectations as much as claudia, and also feels like he owes his dad so much, since his dad was willing to do bad things for him. he has a really good reason to think viren loves him even though he’s the clear unfavorite.

and he’s much more loyal to viren as a result in a way that claudia wasn’t initially. he does actually try to kill the princes, even if he’s uncomfortable with it. i mean, surely his dad would do the same for him, right? now i know we like saying that claudia’s just inSaNe because of her s3 stuff, but pre season-3, soren was the more unscrupulous of the two. killing the princes is something claudia at that point in the story would not have done, and something that she refuses to believe viren would even order. the straw in the camel’s back for soren was being betrayed by viren in that little gaslighting scene, not necessarily just the fact that he ordered to have the princes killed. in that moment he learned that the sacrifices viren made didn’t mean he loves him.

this information also begs the question of how he may have felt about being cured by dark magic at the end of s2. if the context of viren healing him in a similar fashion were present while watching the show and the characters were allowed to have feelings about that, his getting-paralyzed-for-five-seconds thing would be more substantial than a “oooh look a claudia moment. look at that dear. isn’t it so cute. feel bad for the deer. focus on the deer. also guys soren’s dumb lol. look at how dumb he is. he barely has a functioning cerebrum lol. and also guys look he’s crushed by his dad’s expectations sadface. but look at claudia she’s all corrupted now!!! see it’s all good winkyface, this is a Big Moment for Claudia!!!” claudia is doing a very similar thing that viren did in his childhood. of course soren may have some mixed feelings about it--and maybe even slightly alluding to this might have, i dunno, meant something to the person who was actually paralyzed. if this scene were written with more of that in mind, this would actually completely transform the writing here while keeping the general event (a cured soren) intact.

this would also make “you’re heading down that path too” in season 3 also be more resonant than just soren being spooked out by dark magic and make his reasons for refusing the lux aurea dark orb that much stronger. it would imply that he’s aware that there’s some sort of “debt” to pay and maybe that he was somehow “responsible” for viren’s divorce (soren is as dumb as bricks but it’s implied many times that he’s more socially/emotionally intelligent than he looks) thanks to dark magic. he may not want to feel that he “owes” viren anything, and may perhaps see a pattern of self-sacrifice and subsequent resentment in claudia. how justified he would be in thinking this isn’t the point, my fellow claudia stans--the point is that he would think it and it would be a natural extension of his character. it also makes him letting claudia go even more meaningful--not only does he not want to “force her to choose” like he did when they were kids, he also doesn’t want her to feel tied down the way he might have been.

this letting her go thing is ironically enough counterproductive, and will likely lead to the same sort of resentment viren has for soren. soren has “broken up the family again.” after everything they’re done for him, he just turns his back on them, from claudia’s point of view. the series would be quite different if soren was more forceful about getting claudia to leave with him or made a stronger case for leaving viren, but there are real reasons why he wouldn’t do this and when it comes to his family he’s actually quite conflict-averse. and like it would make his speech about thinking that viren was a good man more impactful, and like it’s not like the speech isn’t cheesy as hell already.

#tdp #me.txt #begone thought #and yes... the writing of those two remained good even in s3 #which i absolutely hated #i would probably hate s4 more. purely because aaravos is the focus. #i hate aaravos so much. he's so annoying. #but this isn't a negative post so i will try to forget that insect's pathetic existence #in addition to a claudia stan i am also a viren appreciator. #actually i like his character. i also am completely aware he's a bad person with some good traits. #i totally buy that he may have been better in the past but at least by s1 he's a sadistic/entitled guy #i also have always liked soren even before it was cool. i have liked him since s1. #okay for real: this is the last thing i dig up from the drafts before i go silent about this again #it's the weekend baby i gotta kill the repears #i'm gonna finish the game i'm playing