#i should really make a rant tag at this point dkdkdk

[akkpipitphattana]

The excuses can go on and on. Robbe was fighting internalized homophobia bc of past encounters; Moyo was a-hole bc of untold dysfunction in his life ; sander was a cheater bc has abandonment issues; Britt is a perpetual problem bc she has been hurt so much by ppl she trusted that it's hardened her and jens was a fence sitter bc he struggles with wanting to be accepted. Everybody surely has an excuse for their loathsome behavior but ppl are very selective with which excuses they accept

And I agree with you!!! I think there’s a fine line between excusing someone’s actions vs recognizing why they did something and why those reasons don’t damn them completely, y’know? Like I feel like something a lot of people in fandom struggle with in general is recognize that things aren’t just black and white. You can admit your favorite character has flaws and did shitty things without having to hate them.

And like this is definitely too much nuance for a show with such shitty writing, but at the end of the day, they’re all teenagers. I absolutely hate when people use the “everyone’s fighting a battle you know nothing about” to justify genuinely horrible behavior, but it’s also completely true. Robbe dealt with an immense amount of homophobia and bullying before his season, so he internalized it, and as a result he did things he regretted like lashing out at Sander and using Noor. Those aren’t good thing, and I’m not excusing them, but there was a reason for it.

I talked about it in the ask I got the other day about Moyo, but he was 100% an asshole, and what he was going through at home doesn’t excuse his homophobia or misogyny either - those are the kinds of things I personally don’t think has any real excuses. But, I also think the wtFOCK writers were also just shitty in the way they portrayed him in the first place, and I also believe people can grow and learn from their mistakes. Which, at the very least Moyo learned from the way he treated Robbe at the end of s3.

I also don’t condone the shit either Sander or Britt did during s3 — cheating is never okay, and neither is hitting your partner (or your ex, in Britt’s case), but again, these are teenagers. People are allowed to learn and grow from their mistakes and I really wish it wasn’t something people pick and choose about. Especially because I feel like most of the time when they do pick and choose, it’s so often “this person has done nothing wrong ever” and “this person is the worst person ever” when neither of those statements are ever true. Most characters, especially those on wtFOCK, who again, are a bunch of teenagers, fall somewhere in the middle.