This is a long and rambly discussion post for elriel nation btw so strap in
I want to preface this by kindly asking the elriel hive to not use any tags of #those ships if reblogged. I want to keep this in the elriel echo chamber. Please and thank u!
A huge part of fandom culture is to ship canonically compliant characters and crack ships. Everyone’s got them, and it’s totally normal, and it’s usually fun to engage with.
The majority of the time I have no issue with this (I am a wolfstar shipper and even though there is canonical evidence of them in the original HP books, they’re widely accepted online and balked at IRL usually due to homophobia and #that nasty, nasty woman’s bigotry), but over the last few years a certain group of crack shippers have taken it upon themselves to fly a little too close to the sun, and want to make it our (elriels) problem. I am talking about the Glees.
It’s late and this just popped into my head so I want to rant about it.
My friend who got me into ACOTAR gave me a breakdown of the ships (bc I read ToG first and went in blind. I became a doraelin shipper very early on and remained one halfway through QoS, it was a whole thing when I realized they were not end game lol), bc I asked her to after my ToG experience. She told me all the characters names and then told me about feysand and nessian endgames but didn’t mention az or elain’s situation. I asked her about it and she told me that she didn’t want to mention much about Az because “by the end of the series azriel has two options for how his story could go, elain or another way”. She shared some anti elain sentiment with me because she’s “boring and doesn’t do anything”. That went in one ear and out the other with me tbh.
When I started acowar, and feyre returned to the night court, I saw how elain and azriel were interacting and I concluded that mor was the second LI of az bc of acomaf. I was not apart of the fandom online at this point, so I was genuinely in the dark about everything around these two. I was just reading and talking to my friend about what I read. I also want to add that I still liked L*cien at this point in the series (it changed in acofas, I became apathetic towards him rather quickly when I finished reading that whiny ass convo with feyre…..I don’t play when it comes to her) but wasn’t sold on eluce because they had like one interaction and it wasn’t a great intro to a ship.
However this first meeting in acomaf….. :)
‘Can you truly fly?’ He set down his fork, blinking. I might have even called him self-conscious. He said, ‘Yes. Cassian and I hail from a race of faeries called Illyrians. We’re born hearing the song of the wind.’ ‘That’s very beautiful,’
“Rhys chuckled, Cassian’s wrath slipping enough that he grinned, and Elain, noticing Azriel’s ease as proof that things weren’t indeed about to go badly, offered one of her own as well.”
Well imagine my surprise when I finished acowar and it turns out mor (the person az has crushed on for 500 years) comes out to feyre before the book ends and she explains that she can never love az the way he loves her. After three books, and everything that happens in acowar it was clear to me that elain and azriel were being set up as each others love interests, despite the mating bond with l*cien.
After Acofas I was officially on the elriel train. I mean…
“Azriel strode to the lone window at the end of the room and peered into the garden below.”
“Azriel emerged from the sitting room, a glass of wine in hand and wings tucked back to reveal his fine, yet simple black jacket and pants. I felt, more than saw, my sister go still as he approached. Her throat bobbed.”
“But Azriel only took Elain’s heavy dish of potatoes from her hands, his voice soft as night as he said, ‘Sit. I’ll take care of it.’ Elain’s hands remained in midair, as if the ghost of the dish remained between them. With a blink, she lowered them, and noticed her apron. ‘I—I’ll be right back,’ she murmured, and hurried down the hall before I could explain that no one cared if she showed up to dinner covered in flour and that she should just sit.”
“Elain swept in, apron gone and hair rebraided. ‘Please don’t wait on my account,’ she said, taking the seat at the head of the table.”
“He [Azriel] was the portrait of relaxed, an arm braced against the carved mantel, his wings tucked in loosely, a faint grin on his face and a glass of wine in his hand. He slid his hazel eyes toward my sister without him moving an inch.”
“Azriel and Elain remained in the sitting room, my sister showing him the plans she’d sketched to expand the garden in the back of the town house, using the seeds and tools my family had given her tonight. Whether he cared about such things, I had no idea.”
(Damn the more I read elriel’s acofas moments the more I can’t help but conclude that they just hate/don’t understand introverts 😭)
Before I started SF, I decided to look at the online fandom and bitch……my jaw hit the floor with all the elain/elriel hate I saw on TT. And everyone was talking about a newer character in SF, and I was seeing the glee fan art and was like oh shit ok maybe elriel isn’t endgame.
Fast forward to SF……
‘What happened to Elain?’
“Nesta saw the blow land, like a physical impact, in Elain’s face, her posture. No one spoke, though shadows gathered in the corners of the room, like snakes preparing to strike. Elain’s eyes brightened with pain.”
……and I’m thinking ok, az obviously likes her. Then comes az’s BC. When I finished the elriel portion of the BC I was actually crying bc I was like oh fuck I really love these two….I knew it was over for me, and I was freaked out bc I thought I was going to get got with this “new ship” involving az. Plus I was thinking about elain being left alone in the dark without any explanation and feeling like an idiot for finally showing her true feelings towards him😭. It was like 3AM when I read it so I was hyper emotional lol. But then I read the rest of the BC and was still confused because I didn’t see any romantic subtext with g/wyn. I read it and saw a hurt male who couldn’t stand what he had done to elain the night before, was pissed at his brother for stopping it and making him feel bad when he was finally willing to voice what he’s been feeling for the past year or so and hating that he was shut down because we know he never voices his emotions, and couldn’t bear keeping a gift he picked out specifically for her. A necklace…..for solstice……Then I finished SF as a whole, and still, was confused as to why glee is a ship. Nearly all of their conversations were centered around training, and Sarah didn’t use any descriptors in their encounters that elude to any romance or mutual interest. (Btw I have a whole take on rhys’ part in that BC and I think a lot of ppl are dense and don’t understand what he was going through in that book but I can save that for another time)
Cassian and Feyre have more chemistry than those too lol.
I then talked to my friend about the these ships (elriel, eluce, and glee) ((i didn’t talk about eluce much in this post but that’s a lifeless ship too. I mean…..she can’t stand that red head anyway soooo)), and I said “I’m an elriel through and through. Idc that eluce are claimed to be mates you can tell she does not like him. also glee makes no sense to me.” Not verbatim but you get the point. My friend is very sensible so by the end of our convo, she told me that she’ll accept whatever way Sarah goes and that she’ll give elain a chance when her book comes out.
But isn’t that what all of this shit is about in the end: unjustified dislike/distain/hate for elain? That’s certainly how is appears to me. You cannot look me in the eyes and tell me that you love elain if you ship her with a male whom she has expressed, on multiple occasions, zero interest in AND becomes a shell of herself when he’s around because she just doesn’t want to interact with him. (I want to reiterate that I don’t hate L, I don’t think he’s awful or anything. elain just doesn’t want to know him. And that’s her right.) The glees don’t like her bc she doesn’t fit their stereotype for what they want in an FMC and therefore, for azriel. Which is why they have been chirping that the next book will be azriel’s. Not elain’s….WHAT??? You sound fucking crazy. The eluces (even though they claim they like her) dislike her so much that they go on and on about how she needs to grovel and apologize to the male they like because HE deserves to be happy……the same male who she associates with one of the most traumatic days of her life. Who also has not apologized to her for the part he played in that day, but I digress.
I say all that to point out that Glee specifically is in the crack ship category. No canonical evidence in the text can be used to claim they are ‘mates’ or endgame or anything more than acquaintances. And that’s fine, but don’t act as though they’re to be taken seriously as a canon ship when there’s no evidence to support it. Don’t boldly claim that azriel “has two love interests” when he literally doesn’t. He can’t sleep because of elain. He can’t stop thinking about her. He’s short with his family and others around him the days and weeks following solstice. His shadows threaten to strike nesta when she hurts elain and causes her pain. He doesn’t assign his spies to watch L*cien in acofas because he doesn’t want to know if he’s trying to court elain. He goes full lethal when he hears she may have been hurt. He follows the sound of her laugh to see what caused it. He goes on a suicide mission to save her. They communicate through looks alone when their family is around. Have you read an SJM book before? This is how she sets up her relationships. Like, holy fuck.
You cannot claim elriel is a crack ship because they have had background build up that both FMCs in their respective books have noticed and commented on. Cassian has noticed it too DESPITE not being hyper aware of what’s going on with az in SF. (referencing the scene in SF where elain tells everyone at family dinner about nesta’s love for dancing and the ball story from when they were human).
This ship war shit is fucking crazy because really this should only be between elriel nation and the eluces. Anyway, I’m over dealing with the fever dream brigade and their hallucinations. They’re going to come crashing down like Icarus when the elriel bible release day arrives and all our suffering will finally come to an end.
Then after that I’ll need to defeat the tamlin redemption arch threats, bc that is not a claim, that’s a fuckin threat and I won’t stand for it. But let’s tackle one problem at a time.
Pink: side notes/thoughts that give more context to my points
Blue italics: convos I’ve had being referenced
Purple: elriel moments <3
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Addressing the Topic
People need to stop bending over backwards trying to justify why they would call Rita a woman or only using she/her pronouns when there are plenty of reliable sources that states they are canonically gender neutral.
The Producer, aka the one who pitched the premise, The Writer, the one in charge of the story and characters, and The Actor, the one who plays the character. Three people who have outright said that Rita is Gender Neutral or their gender is undisclosed.
An entire episode explaining that you should never make assumptions about Rita other than what they tell the audience via through their interactions with other characters. (Idol Rita isn't even Rita at all, btw. Being an idol was just a dream they had as a kid and moved on from and it was an undercover mission). Heck, if you have some kind of understand of the Japanese language, it's extremely obvious that Rita is never referred to with gendered terms until Episode 38 by Minongan aka the Jesters' Idiot who Rita only spoke 2.5 lines to and fooled by working undercover.
And don't use the "but Rita uses 私 (watashi) when referring to themself" on me. Kaguragi and Racles use it and both identify as male. It's a neutral term and also a formal one compared to the 俺 (ore) that Red, White, and Royal Blue uses.
As for the pronoun thing, you can use whatever pronoun you want for Rita. He/Him, She/Her, They/Them, Xe/Xer. Whatever. BUT it would be safer to use They/Them as that is the most neutral of the options and Rita's neutral. We don't know what English pronouns Rita prefers so play it safe with They/Them. Not that hard. They don't care what you call them, but it's safer to use the most neutral of the terms.
And to address the topic: no, we do not know if Rita being gender neutral is actually tied to their job as Supreme Justice. I vote No simply because of Karras and Morfonia. Morfonia identifies as female as far as we know and the same probably applies to Karras. How Rita identified as a child was undetermined, but considering no one is shown to know what their bio gender is (not even Morf or Karras), I'd say they're gender neutral regardless of their job. Probably poor wording on the production team's part, but who knows?
TL;DR Rita's Gender Neutral and that's that.
Deal with it.
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something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.
“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”
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