#also ty for your patience!! i am not only chronically ill but normal person sick rn ya girl is going thru it!!

[opalsiren]

Maybe it's because I haven't been reading your blog very long and I've only covered a few months of posts, but I see that you talk a lot about rikki, emma, etc., but not so much about Cleo. So I wanted to ask you what you think of her as a character and her evolution throughout the series (if you already have posts about it and can find them, I'd love to be redirected to them!). 

Also, I absolutely love Bella, but I agree that she is a very underdeveloped character and that if I love her so much today it is because I have been reading a lot about all the character building on blogs here from the fans. So I was wondering, what is your vision of her character based on the version that you have created of her with the scraps that the show gave us. 

PS: I'm really really enjoying spending my afternoons reading your blog this past few days, it helps me to distract myself from medical problems that I've been having for a while

hi!! i think i tend to write about rikki most since she’s my favourite, and write about emma because i think she has a lot of wasted potential as a character. cleo is somewhere in between these two poles: she’s not my absolute fave but she does have a special place in my heart, and while she is generally well developed, i think her overall character arc could use some work

cleo changes vastly, season by season. in season one she is a little timid and shy, but really comes into her own by the third act, overcoming her fear of water and protecting the secret with her besties while finally fessing up to her feelings for lewis. she still feels like the same character, just a little less naive, fully realised while still dynamic and flawed (see: 1x03 ‘catch of the day’ and 1x24 ‘love potion’ especially)

i feel for cleo big time in the second season, what with her family falling apart and her mermaid powers going haywire. how and ever i don’t always love her development this season; i go into more detail on this here but she is unneccessarily cruel and manipulative to lewis and charlotte following the clewis break-up. i do enjoy 2x25 ‘sea change,’ morbid as it is, for exploring her emotional depths, but there are times this season where girlie is beyond insufferable

season three!cleo nearly loses me entirely. i don’t hate her development to women-in-stem-girlboss-extraordinaire and actually think it makes sense for her character. i do, however, hate that this transformation largely takes place upon lewis’s departure. cleo taking her boyfriend’s place as the science genius of the group after he leaves just reeks of misogyny to me, not to mention how she practically becomes an emma stand-in upon her departure. see this post for more and also this

as for miss bella, fandom intellectual @juicenet compiled their vision for bella’s character in this post and i honestly have nothing to add except for further development on the ‘bella should have had a 1950s mermaid counterpart’ of it all

p.s as a fellow medical problems haver i empathise completely and am wishing you health and healing on your journey 💖💕