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lolirock4ever · 4 months

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Let's talk about the "Iris killed Mephisto" situation

With season 3’s possible (and hopeful) arrival, I thought this post might be necessary. I’ve been going through a lot of old lolirock posts, and the amount of people that seem thoroughly convinced that Iris was responsible for Mephisto’s death is absolutely astounding. Like, have we watched the same scene? You could attribute her a small fraction of the blame, sure. But all of it? It seems to me like some of yall (in a very Praxina fashion, may I add) just want someone convenient to blame.

Like, I’m all in favor of the “Iris killed Mephisto” jokes, like, keep making them, I love them. But… it should stay that way… a joke. Because some people seem to have taken it quite literally.

I think I’ve read something similar somewhere before but, Mephisto’s death was not only one person’s fault. That was the point. It was a combination of variables that all ended up going tremendously wrong for the twins, BUT, one in which NONE of the characters involved had any intention of contributing to.

You wanna blame people? Sure, you could blame Iris. She was the one that allegedly couldn’t control her Shanilla form. She was the one who sent the blast that, when collided with Gramorr’s own energy force, hit and shattered the big, shiny, and mildly explosive rock, that was going to fall onto Praxina, before Mephisto yeeted her away like a ragdoll and took on the blast himself. Wow. Does that not sound far fetched and awfully convoluted? Yeah, because it is. If anything, you could say that Iris indirectly and totally unintentionally contributed to Mephisto’s death.

And you know what? While we’re on the subject of blaming, why not blame Gramorr? He was the one who started this whole mess for everyone. He is the reason that battle was even happening in the first place. The energy Iris sent collided with HIS magic, causing the blast, so, logically speaking, he should also be blamed, right? Did he mean to “kill” Mephisto? No. Though if I’m being totally honest, he probably wouldn’t have cared either way, but still. I’m not sure he even noticed that was even happening. But it also wasn’t his intention.

Oh, do you wanna blame someone else? Great! How ‘bout we blame Praxina herself? If she had just left with Mephisto, like he wanted, instead of “wanting to watch” (what the heck was that about anyways? babygirl, i love you but TF?!), they wouldn’t have been anywhere near the blast when it happened. And then, to save her from her own recklessness, Mephisto was the one who got screwed.

Heck, we can even blame Mephisto himself. He was the one who decided to jump in front of his sister to save her, wasn’t he? No one made him do it.

See? We can blame pretty much everyone. OR we could rip the page we took from Praxina’s blame book, crumple it into a ball, rip it to shreds, and throw it off of a bridge. No good comes from trying to find a non-existent scapegoat, and that’s something that some of you, AND Praxina alike, are going to have to learn at some point. Sometimes things aren’t just black and white. There are shades of gray (this is so cliché, but it’s true).

But let’s backpedal, shall we? Imagine Iris was actually the one who undoubtedly, yet accidentally killed Mephisto. I’m gonna ask the real question now. Why should she care? I love the twins more than anything else, obviously, they are my favorite characters in the show, and I feel awful about what happened to them. But they’re not exactly saints. I’m not even going to list all the awful things they did to the princesses, and Iris specifically, because we'd be here forever. But I’ll use Princess Brenda as an example. You know, the episode where Mephisto and Praxina basically “killed” all of Iris’s friends, AND the love of her life, just… because. And they did all that, 1) on purpose; and 2) did not feel bad about it in the slightest, and even gloated about it. Like, they were thrilled. So how exactly is this any different? If anything, it’s way worse. Iris indirectly and completely unintentionally killed Mephisto (as stated above), with lots of other people to be blamed for it as well, AND, she even apologized to Praxina, and said she felt sorry about her loss. She obviously didn’t feel good about it.

What I think screwed her over with certain members of the fandom was the “But you can’t blame me for it.” line. Because maybe I don’t know, YOU CAN’T. Also, what was she supposed to do? She knew it wasn’t fully her fault, as she fucking should. So should she just drop to the ground and cry her eyeballs out, and mourn the loss of her enemy who had consistently made her life a living hell for god knows how long? Like, are some of y’all mental? And it’s fucking hypocritical of Praxina to expect anything more than that from Iris as well, considering everything they've done to her (but, then again, Praxina IS a hypocrite, not a single surprise there).

At the end of the day, neither Iris, nor any of the other princesses owed Mephisto (or Praxina) anything. They didn’t owe him their grief, their mourning, they didn't owe him shit. Because, guess what? A lot of yall aren’t prepared to hear this but. Mephisto enjoyed screwing with the princesses' lives just as much as Praxina. No consideration whatsoever about anyone they had to trick, backstab or hurt. Yeah, Gramorr was making them do it. But they sure as hell were having a blast through it all. In fact, only near the end, when Gramorr was yapping about planetary enslavement or whatever, did Mephisto actually start to kinda realize the gravity of the situation (while Praxina was still on cloud fucking nine). Which- props to him, I guess. I think he was realizing that all of that wasn’t just some big elaborate joke. I think I’ve made a meme of this in the past like, “Wait. You guys are actually evil? I thought it was a joke.”, and this basically perfectly sums up what I think was going through his brain at that moment. That’s why he was so apprehensive till the very end. That, and also the fact that he was then starting to realize that him and Praxina were not any different from Lev, or Jodan, or any of the other minions Gramorr lied to and exploited, to do his dirty bidding for him. They, too, had been expendable, tricked into devoting their entire lives to someone who filled their heads to the brim with nonsense and empty promises of grandeur, when, in reality, he wasn’t actually planning on following through with anything. Why would he? After all, they were just cheap, stupid merchandise.

Still, none of that removes the fact that both Mephisto and Praxina were bad people. Yes, they were kids, so there was obviously room for growth if put in the correct environment, but nonetheless. And I agree with people when they say that Mephisto had more good in him than Praxina, but that still doesn’t make him a good person. The problem is that people like to babify him, and that kind of takes away all the complexity that makes his character so beautiful.

You can love a character and believe they deserved better, while also holding them accountable for their actions and acknowledging they weren’t perfect.

This is going to sound insensitive as hell but the twins made their bed. Now they have to lay in it (well, Praxina has. Mephisto… well, he can't really lay on anything, can he?- because he is- ya know- dead, but… whatevs).

Iris could’ve even not shown a single ounce of sadness for what happened to Mephisto and she still would’ve been well within her right to do so. Of course, she is objectively “good” so the expectations for her to do “good” are much higher than the bad guys. The villains are “objectively bad” so whenever they do something only slightly itty bitty nice they’re immediately reduced to “misunderstood” or “poor babies omg uwu” or “they didn’t do anything wrong ever”. Because for them the bar is on the floor, the expectations are low, they don’t need to do anything. For christ sake, let the protagonists make mistakes, allow them to not be perfect, to have dimension. Y’all can’t handle it, can you? Either Iris is a bitch for “killing” poor wittle baby Mephisto or she’s a, quote on quote, “Mary Sue”. Like, pick a lane and leave female characters alone. Let them be complex, let them lose their marbles, let them make mistakes and learn from them. This goes for Iris, but for Praxina too.

She’s gonna fuck up a lot in season 3, we all know it. She’s gonna do unspeakable things, and I fully believe that, at some point, she might even get past the point of no return. Because she’s human too. Because, right now, she’s all alone without the one person that was always there for her, and that she always took for granted. This doesn’t have much to do with the original point of this post, maybe I’ll elaborate on this later, but I think that one of the main conflicts that Praxina is going to deal with this season is GUILT. The guilt of knowing you didn’t appreciate someone enough while they were there, that you took them for granted. She’s gonna think back to all the times she yelled at or hurt Mephisto (yes, most of that was your usual sibling stuff, but she did take it too far sometimes), and that’s gonna fucking break her. You just know she’s going to have those memories replaying over and over again in her head 24/7. And that’s gonna fuck her up badly.

She’s still a bad person, but she has layers. She is a complex human being, always, but now more so than ever, and y’all better keep that in mind (also, please please please @teamlolirock, you have the opportunity to do something great with this, maybe even something a little darker to get different audiences for the show as well, and peak the interest of people that aren’t all that familiar with the show yet, please do not waste it, DO NOT squander this potential).

Also, might I add, I loved how in character for her it was that she immediately blamed Iris for the whole Mephisto thing. Like, if there’s something Praxina has never done during this whole show, was take the blame for anything. That’s her Achilles’s heel, one of her biggest fatal flaws (that and her ongoing hypocrisy. pride too), and of course this situation would only exacerbate it. Well played, @teamlolirock, well played. Here, take my hat.

Anyways, Banes is the true bitch, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he turned out to be the big bad boss, and I don’t see people discussing it enough (I might make a post on this too when I have the time).

With that being said, if you’ve read this far, thank you, and I’d like to know your thoughts. If there’s anything this fandom is missing is some good old’ character and world building dissection. Have a good one.

XOXO

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