#like idk i understand shaming people for not wanting to engage with anything more complicated than some disney throwaway trash but like i

[dirhwangdaseul-archived]

idk how cause im dumb but i do believe that there's like a certain responsibility from audiences nowadays to lead on how do people engage with art and entertainment like i don't have the words for it but living in a country that has shaped education very visibly and obviously to create engineers for the multiple national and mostly international industries that find cheap labor here, it has actually meant that the education drowns arts and reduces ofc any interest in them since parents and teachers themselves emphasize how little any activity that isn't about being "functional" in society will give people a chance to live, like i always remember that growing up, to look for that which is useful to eat and thus live, the image of the artist as some poor wanderer is so ingrained here that white mexicans actually do copy that look as they try poverty like a new skin (there's like a lot of racist caricatures they try to emulate hand in hand with that... god), and then when you consider how many people drop out by the time high school arrives? not even that like as far as a i remember till a few years back only secondary school (american junior high school) was mandatory, but theres already issues with parents not taking their kids to primary because the kids need to work for a living, so yay, already capitalist life being your teacher and telling you to earn your fucking life, how fun, but back to the school system, most of it only cares about chemistry, physics, maths, the practical the functional, with those subjects usually having a laid out understanding of the processes, but just so barely, very little understanding of the different intelligences of kids since kids are all expected to understand everything equally with the same methods at the same time while the rest of subjects like geography or civil education or history are treated as memory games without any humane understanding of the reasons for so much data to be important to remember, like no attention towards the ideas that shape people as people and not tools, so like idk i do think certain peoples if not all of us face a challenge in getting people to literally behave humanely because there are systems that have already ate the very souls of people that are part of the society they experience! it's like that for me really, it feels like everytime i engage someone in méxico and they find kindness before looking at me like im the next freak looking to take advantage of them it's a win.... and i know all of this sounds like nonsense but it's how i lived the school system so idk

[writhe]

uhh body feels big cw for body image / weight stuff? 

i’m not sure how to write about this tactfully since this is something i don’t really talk to anyone about, not fully, and never have really tried to 

been having a lot of strange body feels, mostly good. i had a lot of VERRYYY disordered/harmful ideologies/practices surrounding food imposed on me at a very young age. it shaped the ways I’ve been able to engage with food/movement/the world around me in a way i always figured was sort of normal until i realized it really wasn’t 

it was a really alienating and isolating experience! i know it’s similar to a lot of other people’s, but it’s one that’s hard to talk about and explain and it’s also one that doesn’t feel good to describe 

but, like, I think this last year or so is the first time i’ve ever felt, like, fully comfortable in physicality. I it is also the first time since I was pretty young that I’ve just eaten whatever I want without restricting myself or making nonsensical, terrible rules and it’s felt really good. i’ve tried a lot more things. i’ve learned more about what i actually like 

and same goes for movement- it was very complicated. it was always in flux between overexertion or not doing anything at all (as a response to grief, mostly) and both of these things felt like punishments in their own right 

but, as of these last two years, i love hiking. i love walking. i love climbing, i love running, i love swimming and jumping around with halliwell. it’s just fun and i feel strong and very free. and i love that i can, like, do these things and then feel a hunger so deep without it feeling shameful and i love that i know I can just eat until i do not feel hungry and the best part is i’m doing it because i WANT to and because it feels good and not as some form of ritualistic & desperate self-harm

new feelings are arising these days. yeah, my body has changed. it still is. i gained a lot of weight when i was grieving -and i think that i had to in that it was survival and i wish it was met with, like, neutrality? decency?- and i still feel frustrated by the ways i was treated when that happened, even by people very close to me. I lost a bunch later (and, like, only after I’d worked though a lot of the restrictive habits so i’m really not trying to pedal any sort of ‘dieting and weight loss is good!’ thing here AT ALL, it was just that i want to point out that this coincided with me engaging with food/movement in a healthy and non-obsessive way)

but, like, idk, i mentioned in a group chat about wanting to go for a run after work and one of my friends, well-intentioned, was like ‘make sure you are eating and nourishing your body with food’ which was like....idk? made me feel weird. i can’t fault anyone for not understanding something so internal but it was hard not to bristle at the implication that i DON’T do that. i’m not mad or upset with anyone since obviously it was coming from a place of care 

but like....i’ve only seen my family a couple times in the past year and they want to talk about how different i look- what i’m doing, etc. outside of this, it has felt good to be honest if i do or do not want to eat something and my grandma was trying to get me to take, like, a huge tray of croissants home and I didn’t really want to. it wasn’t a stance- I’m just not a huge fan of bread and i feel bad about throwing away food that’s perfectly good. everyone thought it was a show of temperance and someone said something like “oh yeah i bet you don’t eat that anymore” and I just like....did not know what to say to that? it’s hard not to come off as combative when you gawk at something that’s supposed to be a compliment 

and then, like, my aunt pulled me aside and asked what i was doing to lose weight...like, straight up asked me if i was on a diet, and i was like, so caught off guard. i literally never ever want to try any sort of ‘diet’ again in my life. and like i wasn’t sure how to answer her question- because I’m doing literally nothing, there are no rules or restrictions. there is nothing that i don’t eat, there is nothing that I do out of some artificial obligation to creating a deficit. it’s just almost, like, if you stop torturing yourself by withholding food your body will just...stop feeling starved and desperate and you just stop thinking about it. I ended up telling her that I just started cooking for myself a lot more and figuring out what I actually really like but i felt backed into a corner and i’m still unsure how to articulate that prioritizing pleasure and fun over, like, unachievable aesthetics has kind of been the main goal versus, like, body changes that happened inadvertently as a result of making myself suffer less 

it still is very complicated. when people i haven’t seen in a while tell me i look great i don’t like knowing that they are comparing the current version of myself who has learned a better way to survive to the past version, who was also surviving the best he could. and it feels hard to not WANT to be a little showy with my body, where i feel strong and safe, but i’m worried it comes off as some sort of pointed ‘im smaller now!’ when in reality it’s just that, idk, i’ve never been ABLE to feel this good, even when i was, like, a lot smaller than i am now and was literally starving 

wrapping this up now. if you read this, thanks? 

[lady-plantagenet]

if you’re still doing those: edward iv / elizabeth woodville for the ship bingo 🕊x

I’m so sorry, this whole past week has been one massive mental breakdown and I have been finding it incredibly hard to do anything besides uni assignments and writing. Also, I have a lot to say about these two so I didn’t want to half-ass it.

Some Comments:

I don’t know if I told you this but this used to be my OTP, like years ago when I first got into this era and did not think/know much about Clarence and the others. But now it’s no longer the case and that’s not necessarily because it got replaced by gisabel per se but because I’ve always found it extremely hard to reconcile myself with the infidelity aspect. Even when I was more childish I felt a bit dissapointed in the fact that he didn’t appoint her (or Anthony) regent, like obviously now I understand why it was to an extent untenable politically, but back then my younger mind just saw it as ‘he trusted his brother more’, which kind of threw a wrench. So much for the ‘it’s complicated’ square. The problem with long marriages is that the delicious aspect tends to wane, and that can’t be helped in a 20 year long marriage! But obviously the 1464-1470 years taken into isolation... well... it was the epitome of delicious, sexual and romantic. You might find me pointing this out wierd given that I didn’t make the same remarks on Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor who were also a pretty long marriage, it’s just that... in my mind they kind of stagnate age-wise even as they advance past their twenties because the whole narrative (historical and fictional) around them focuses on the first years of their union and the tribulations, whereas Edward and Elizabeth have a presence way past that as they were after all monarchs and never at one point left to live a quiet life and were no longer chronicled - so in that way they age before our eyes. And with that age you see the infidelity issue get worse, together with Edward’s greater promotion of Gloucester, his drinking, eating etc issues and it starts painting a sad image into my mind of like idk a love that at one point stopped being what it once was and could never again be - like the embers burning out? This turns the what could have been a obbsessive unhealthiness borne from passion into another caused by disillusionment? I don’t put too much stock into this, personally I feel the change in Edward was caused by other external factors and not Elizabeth herself eg Warwick and Clarence’s betrayals and deaths, the massive burden of fixing the previous administration’s mess etc. Nevertheless, Elizabeth on her own did not seem to be enough to drag him out of it and prevent some of his unhealthy habits. I do realise it’s a bit too much to ask for though.

Nevertheless, I do see them as soulmates, she seemed like one of the only people who could keep up with him in will and wit (though Jane Shore seemed quite a competitor in this regard) I’m not the type of person who thinks Edward was dominated by his lust, and I think based on that venetian letter (you know the Ziglio one XD) and the fact that it said that Edward loved her for a long time before marrying her, it was clearly a decision from the heart not the *ahem* codpiece. Also a part of the soulmate/star-crossed trope is the whole ‘they defied all odds, they withstood opposition’, and Liz and Big Ed are famously that. I would totally read fic for this but surprisingly there aren’t many! I honestly don’t know how come?? Like yes they do appear in a lot of histfics and the like, but apart from TWQ they are never the central focus, and even there we don’t get enough of them (which really irritates me). Some write me some!! I am intrigued by the pairing but extremely picky when it comes to how they are written because I have particular headcanons which I am fairly wedded to but do not expect they will be abided by. More in the pragraph below.

The Ship:

I absolutely can not stand portrayals of Elizabeth Woodville as a golddigger, much less some Marilyn Monroe type of bimbo. We know the type of beauty she had... a chronicler called her an excellent but solemn (or sthing like that) beauty where York in his letters to her for the marriage of Sir Hugh complemented her deep sorrowful look or such. She was a pious, economical woman who took her queenship extremely seriously and led a cultivated court, patronised literature and may have also written a poem herself (you know the one about Venus we spoke about). She was years older than Edward and on top of that a widow with two children of her own. I want to see that dynamic! I want to especially see how she drew Edward away from Warwick’s influences in order to put him on the path he was angling for: the statute of livery 1463 and the new sumptuary laws (that most famously restricted the length of piked shoes to 3 inches hhh) are very indicative of a king who (even before meeting her) wanted to install a strong centralised monarchy with a monopoly on violence and its laws. Not because of some rapaciousness on her part but because her and her family believed in him, experienced the exequies of war and wanted to put a stop to it. I want her to love Edward for putting an end to people like Warwick who caused all her family’s (and the gentry class as a whole) misfortunes and struggles, and in a way feel like she provided him with not only a circle of people who would help him realise this but also with a sort of family to soften the personal blow that he felt when part of his birth family betrayed him. I love the father-in-law becomes surrogate father trope (as I think you can tell) and I like to see Earl Rivers as that for him, hell you can take it even further and make Jacquetta as some sort of mother-figure for him as opposed to Cecily who apparently scorned the marriage and at that time seemed to side more heavily with George. I like to think under her influence she empowered him to act more ruthlessly in pursuit of his goal, but at the same time I think that while certain things were good in the long-term eg Clarence’s execution, (maybe Desmond’s??) they may have had a toll on the relationship later on. I headcanon Elizabeth as tragically hardened by the loss of her brother and father at Edgecoat and I think that may also have thrown a bit of a wrench into their love, given how she was faced with the violent consequences of being queen and afterwards with how Warwick and co. went free and she lost her chance of vengeance. I don’t think they were ever out of love though, especially judging by how she continued to be pregnant up to 3 years short of his death and the absolute trust he put in her. But I headcanon his attachment to Jane Shore as him seeking the light-hearted wit and lively banter that Elizabeth slowly started losing as the years went on and she became less vivacious and a tad more calculating and icy. I headcanon them as having a rift when it came to dealing with problems: she would keep on with her ministrations whereas he would just want to engage in escapisms. But the thing with the infidelity is that one should keep in mind that during that period relations would have to stop once the woman started showing, so Edward having affairs should not be read into too much tbh, perhaps it was more a type of addiction on his part like drinking and eating was - like all part of an excessive Epicureanism which he adopted to relieve himself of his stresses and sorrows (and boy were there many!), so not something that necessarily indicated he grew tired of her or whatever. Maybe she understood that and that’s why she didn’t make a fuss? But then again, the fact that there wasn’t complete faithfulness remains a personal impediment for me with this ship :// that’s just me personally.

Also the discussion we had about Mélusine and the alchemical elements and Edward IV’s own interest in such (which was used as ammunition for George when he accused Edward of engaging in dark arts to corrupt his subjects XD... yes I know très ironique)... made me headcanon him and Elizabeth bonding over this, and perhaps seeing their union as somewhat quite mystical. It would be something so interesting to explore and I think it’s a real shame that people nowadays recoil everytime they hear the word ‘Woodville’ and ‘Mélusine’ put together which is a shame because when handled delicately it could turn into something beautiful and it was certainly not a PG invention!

Also... those two have some bitchin’ fannart!

So yes, this was quite the stream of consciousness... but I do have a lot of thoughts for this couple! They were my OTP for the longest time after all.

[snugglyporos]

Okay ya’ll I have to rant for a good minute about the Fate series because my stupid autistic brain has been hyper focusing on it for the past four hours and I need to put these thoughts down or I’ll never get rid of them. 

I’m so... disappointed? frustrated? mad? Idk what I think. It’s all of these things to see such a great idea executed so awfully. So lazily. So incompetently. 

Because I can’t help constantly engaging with it and going ‘you know, this would be really good if they just did x.’ There’s so many monumental moments of stupidity that I can’t help but go ‘wow that’s dumb as hell.’

There’s a rule in fiction where the larger the stakes are, the more complex and unwieldy it gets, because it effects more things. That’s why usually the best fiction involves low stakes overall, or personal stakes, because you don’t need to then consider the cosmological complications of your story. Having a story that involves magic, time travel, secret organizations, multiple illuminati organizations on top of those, and countless other bullshit does not make for a coherent or compelling story. 

I’ve said before that one thing I hate is the idea of a ‘world organization.’ It’s lazy as hell. If Russia and China couldn’t get along when they were both communist, the idea that the entire world with all its varying ideologies and ethnic groups could be run by one group of people is nonsense. People can barely coexist with others like themselves. Furthermore, in our age of nationalism, the idea that say, China would have their top brass subserviant to western illumiati is stupid. It’s also stupid in the reverse. The idea that all of ANYTHING is ruled by one group of people is stupid and it makes you look lazy to write things like that.

Second, trying to put your story in the ‘real world’ or any image of it while claiming that all the world’s mages belong to one organization while ‘the church’ that runs all religions exists is stupid. It defies belief. It also wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t dead set on trying to explain how this goes on in the ‘real world’. 

Also, apparently time travel exists. Also, all of human history was erased. Yet somehow they go back in time, and summon people from the future. You know, going back to a time that doesn’t exist, and summoning people from the future who haven’t been born yet, who also don’t exist. Time travel is ALWAYS stupid. It’s ALWAYS bad. Always. Because the core notions and questions that it brings up immediately reveal why it is stupid. Let’s say you sent one person back in time. If you witnessed it, and didn’t go with them, you should now not exist. Why? Because the act of something being somewhere that it wasn’t before creates a paradox. The only way it doesn’t is if the world you lived in is the same world where they went back in time, and that raises questions about fate and free will, and most authors simply aren’t interested in getting that metaphysical, and as such render their stories incredibly stupid. 

But! Let’s try, for the sake of arguement, to put aside all this nonsense. Does the core idea of the story make sense? Are there clear, defined rules? No! Nothing makes any goddamn sense. Apparently, magic exists, but then there are magic circuts, which aren’t explained. The rules about everything is not explained and is frequently contradicted. Example. Who can be summoned, and how? Sometimes, it’s anyone. Sometimes, it’s different versions of someone. Sometimes, it requires a piece attached to that someone. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, where the person is summoned changes how powerful they are, and sometimes it doesn’t.

But they can’t even get their basic shit right. Example: is Dracula a vampire or is he not? Because the series can’t decide if it wants to allow people from history OR people from fiction to be summoned, it can’t decide if someone like Vlad III is undead or not. Are you going with the version of history where he was an insane, murderous, nationalistic king? Or are you going with the version from the story of Dracula, a work of fiction? You can’t have it both ways!

Here’s another example: can you summon gods or not? Heracles is summoned, and Heracles is a god. He was literally made into a god at the end of his own story. Even if you go ‘well, the version that people can summon is his non-god self from before the end’ he is still a demigod. Which means that you’re now getting into weird territory where it’s unclear who and what counts as someone who can be summoned.

But then you get into having to think about all the weird historical revisionism that the series plays with. Look, historical fiction can be fine. What I don’t understand is the series’ weird fixation with turning some of histories worst individuals into anime girls. You could certainly, for example, make a version of King Arthur where all the sexes are switched. Granted, a whole lot of the story wouldn’t work, because characters like Morgan Le Fay and Mordred no longer work in their story roles anymore. But you could, theoretically do it. 

What I don’t get is why the series says, ‘you know who we should depict as a kind and gentle anime babe? Nero.” You know, the Nero who kicked his pregnant wife to death, castrated a man and forced him to marry him, put on plays that people were forced to attend and then executed anyone who yawned or sneezed during his performances, and who built a private lake where the Colosseum now is, put a floating house on it, and had the ceiling have an accurate replica of the starry night sky using precious gems, only to then remark that ‘now I can live like a human being.’ Yeah, that Nero. Clearly, this just screams that we need to depict them as being a kind and gentle ruler, and not say, an unstable psychopath who sees himself as a literal god walking upon the earth. 

But that’s not even their worst offence. They turn Elizabeth Bathory into a pop idol. You know, one of histories worst serial killers? The person who had innocent women murdered and then bathed in their blood? Yes, clearly that is someone we should portray as an innocent girl. 

And it’s not like history is lacking in great women who did fantastic things. There are scores of heroines to choose from if you want to use them. You don’t need to pick serial killers and sex change the most insane emperors.

But even some of the ones they do pick don’t make sense. Why the fuck is Marie Antoinette considered a ‘heroic spirit?’ If we go by her in popular myth, she’s best known for something she didn’t say, which is ‘let them eat cake.’ Why the fuck did that mean ‘let’s make her someone who is entirely misunderstood and loves the peasants?’ Also, why a ‘rider’ and choose her for that because of her being pulled in a cart to her execution? The fuck?

It beggars belief. It utterly confounds the mind. It’s lazy, and its shoddy. Almost as shoddy as the notion of ‘classes’ which makes no sense and apparently has a heirarchy, which itself makes no sense if the whole point of having people fight is to decide something. Having people fight where someone gets an innately better class at random makes no sense. Hell, having classes at all makes no sense. Having it be okay for the things you summon to kill those who summoned them to win makes no sense, because if all you needed to do was kill each other, you don’t need heroes to do that! 

Hell, the fact that they’re fighting over the ‘holy grail’ and that it was made in japan is nonsense already. The holy grail is literally arthurian legend. I know japan gets a pass for this shit, but I don’t know why. Everyone rolls their eyes when they say that ancient egyptians look exactly like modern day japanese people, but apparently it’s also okay that they just straight up steal something from arthurian legend as a premise... and then entirely botch that premise or understanding anything ABOUT it. 

Here’s an idea. If you’re going to use the holy grail as your plot device, you know the thing Jesus drank out of at the last supper, maybe don’t then say that people can just make them all over the place? That’d be like if in the last crusade, all of the cups that Indiana Jones found were all capable of being the holy grail. It’s stupid.

Why is it so hard to just do something simple? You don’t need to overcomplicate this shit. Grab some characters who each want a thing they can’t have, have them be represented by some great hero, have them fight for that thing, and you’re done! You don’t need to bring time travel, the illuminati, nonsense magical rules, and metaphysical shit into this! 

Again, maybe the creators have no desire to do anything other than try and see how many awful historical people they can put boobs on. It’s starting to remind me of that book that went around a few years back where someone drew history’s greatest murderers as anime babes, so you could see guys like Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot as big tiddy anime girls. Why? Idk. 

But if the series wants to do that, if all it wants to do is wallow around in its own shit, it’s taking way too much time and effort trying to make up stupid nonsense. It’s just so frustrating and disappointing to see an idea with such promise be farted away by people who clearly do not give a shit about what they’re making in the slightest. It’s a damn shame.

[elizbethweir]

if you could change ten things about the writing of the originals what would you change?

Oh man,that’s difficult. I’m actually not sure I’m good at this. Iknow lots of people think they could write the show better than the writers do and they might be right,but I’m not sure I’d be able to. (Yousee, instead of writing badly, I just don’t write at all. That helps.) I know what I like and what I don’t, but being able to spot problems is not the same as fixing them, and having better ideas. Writing well is hard. I don’t know how people do it.

Anyway, I dohave lots of vague awful ideas. I’m not sure these are THE ten things I’d change, because I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of important things. These are just 10 random things I thoughtof first.

1)      I wouldn’t introduce a new villainor threat each season. I wouldn’t constantly have them run around on the vergeof death. Characters shouldn’t always be reactionary, fleeing away from onethreat or the other; they should be pro-active too. Their goals should gobeyond just surviving. It’s not always about who you’re fighting against, but also about what you arefighting for. In s1, this was kindastill the case, with Klaus and Elijah actively engaging in plans to turn NOLAinto their home again, rather than constantly being in mortal danger. In s2 thethreat of a villain worked really well, so I would’ve kept that one. But in theother seasons I would’ve put the focus on the family and the city, thedifferent factions and all the conflicts and alliances between them. I’ve saidbefore that my favourite plots are character-driven. I like internal conflictwhere there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong side. So this means getting ridof villains like The Hollow, and focusing more on the familial relationships,the alliances, the different conflicting visions for the city (which couldstill be dangerous in many ways). It should’ve been all about making NOLA thehome they would’ve gladly raised their daughter in. And if an actual villain/deaththreat does pop up, it’s probably amore effectual one because you haven’t been oversaturated.

2)      Sort of related to that: I wouldn’t constantlyintroduce new secondary characters only to get rid of them again. A couple ofconsistent familiar faces among the werewolves/vampires/witches, even whenthey’re just in the background and don’t have a major role within the plot, areunderrated. It adds to the entire atmosphere and sense of reality of the show. TOreally only seems to create secondary characters so that later they can bekilled off again or something, but it’s not really that impactful if you hardlyknow the character, and it’s difficult to construct better secondaryrelationships if the characters keep getting replaced. By sticking with somesecondary characters for a longer period of time, it’s possible to give them alittle more depth and development. It makes them more interesting (secondarycharacters are often forgettable on TO, and that’s a shame). Josh is about theonly example of a familiar face. He’s stuck around. Even when he wasn’trelevant for the plot and sometimes didn’t appear in a lot of episodes, he stillserved as a reminder: there are more vampires than just Marcel. Sure, he usuallydidn’t add much to the plot, but if the politics of the factions had been abigger part of the show instead of the constant death threats (like I wastalking about in point 1), then these secondary characters would’ve automatically been more relevant. The show should’ve utilised the characters they already had, rather than inventing new ones all the time.(And again: if the plot were character-driven, the characters would automatically have had a role inside of it)

3)      More flashbacks. Of the Originals,but also of NOLA, and the different factions, and the Trinity. Give us somemore historical perspective. The Originals are 1000 years old, they’ve seen andexperienced a lot in their time, so it makes sense that everything that happensto them in modern times looks similar to a certain part of their lives before;after all, history rhymes. Flashbacks of NOLA in the past also makes us betterunderstand the dynamics within the city, in line with the earlier points, andcould help to expand the mythology of the supernatural beings.

4)      When Father Kieran died, I wantedCamille to take over his job as the representative of the human faction. Sheshould’ve been the bridge between the humans and the supernatural world. Tryingto make sure no humans get caught up in the mess of the supernaturals,advocating peace, balancing her obligations towards the humans with herintimacy to Klaus… it would be good. I also would’ve scrapped her turninginto a vampire and turning off her emotions etc. If she had to die, I would’vedone it in 3x10; I would’ve let her decide not to go through with thetransition. Butif I had full reign, I actually don’t think I would’ve killed her at all. Irather liked the perspective she brought to the show; she just needed betterwriting and a better purpose, and being a champion for the humans could’ve beenit.

5)      I wouldn’t have put Hayley andElijah in a romantic relationship. I have a very complicated opinion about themas a ship. There are things I like about them, though those were mostly ins1-2. I liked that they were basically these polar opposites in almost everyway imaginable,  who still had anunderstanding despite of that, and who became more and more similar as timewent on (mostly due to changes and developments on Hayley’s part). I might talkabout that some more later, because this is not really the place. But all ofthose things could still be part of their relationship if it was platonic and Idon’t think they have the type of chemistry to pull a romantic relationship off.They became very drawn-out in s3, and they kind of stopped making sensealtogether in s4. I think I would still have Hayley have a crush on Elijah atfirst in s1, since he was kind to her and protected her, but I would let thatfade away once she got closer to Jackson.  

6)      Elijah’s arc in s4 and s5. I thinkit was a good idea to have Elijah unravel in s4 just when Klaus got it moretogether, but the way in which they did it was very half-assed and the reasonfor it was not very clear. Elijah in an existential crisis because he thinksKlaus doesn’t need his help anymore is good, but that doesn’t explain whyElijah felt that way. I’ve tried to think of a reason, but so far I haven’treally come up with a satisfying one. I also would not have framed Elijah’scharacter as if he’s always been extremely violent, and this is just his realcharacter surfacing. I mean, he isviolent, but not more so than the rest, so that angle is just really odd to me.(I already wrote something about Elijah’s arc after s4 here,which I still mostly agree with – it’s kinda long though.) And the lack ofHope/Elijah scenes would only have made sense if we saw Elijah make a consciousdecision to avoid a relationship with Hope. I think maybe it would’ve been niceif it was similar to how he avoided a relationship with Marcel due to Klaus’ jealousiesand insecurities, but I’m not sure I like that yet. Idk, nothing I think of fors4 Elijah satisfies me, so I’m still unsure exactly of how I’d change it. Itdefinitely needed a lot more subtlety and a lot more screentime than it got though,that much I do know.

As for Elijah losing his memories in s5… The concept of the Red Dooris that Elijah hides things behind it that make him feel guilty, so that he canforget about them and doesn’t have to feel guilty about it. However, some of Elijah’s feelings of guilt have never been placed behind the RedDoor… like those towards Klaus. What if,  instead of making Elijah forget all of hissiblings entirely, they would just have made him forget all of the things thatmake him so blindedly devoted to his brother? All of the things that madeElijah feel guilty towards Klaus, especially Mikael’s abuse, placed behind theRed Door and therefore out of Elijah’s conscious memory. I’m really curious ofwhat Klelijah’s relationship would look like then. Tbh I’m not even suremyself, but I think it would still lead to a fracture of their relationship,because Elijah now remembers a lifetime of doing everything for Klaus withoutquite remembering or understanding why he’d ever go so far for his brother. This could still lead him to decide to live his life away from Klaus, to create his own life elsewhere. Klaus would still feel abandoned. But he’d stillbe Elijah; he’d still love his family, and recognise their faces. I think it’dbe interesting without being as infuriating as the memory loss storyline was now. It’d be more subtle.

7)      This is completely self-indulgent,but if I could choose without restrictions… I’d make all of the incestexplicit lmao. Same goes for their sexualities.

8)      I wouldn’t have got rid of theTrinity so quickly. This is also self-indulgent, because I know it wasfrustrating that they weren’t killed off because it should’ve been so easy forthe Mikaelsons to do it, but I just liked them as characters so much, and therewas so much history and potential to explore. I’d still need a plausible reasonfor how this would work, but I haven’t figured that out yet. Ah well, details.

9)      Hayley’s death. She should’ve lived. 

10)   More family moments. This is clichéand obvious so I put it last, but I couldn’t think of anything that I was moredesperate to have than that. Always more family moments.