enslaughts · 1 year ago
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tlou fics are prime real estate for fix its but i kinda hate how many of them completely invalidate or outright erase ellie's rightful anger at joel
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nikatyler · 5 years ago
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Since you’ve mentioned having mixed feelings about Miracle’s storyline as well as Miracle and Adam, I was wondering if you could go into more detail about how you feel about them? Sorry if that’s a weird question I’m just always interested on how feelings change over time. Plus you always have such interesting things to say about your characters.
Sure thing! I hope this rambling won’t be too confusing. I’ve rewritten it like three times already because I just don’t know where to start. There’s so much to talk about, so many personal influences and whatnot, and I don’t know how to go about it without revealing too much personal stuff while also making my point clear...you know what I mean? But this is my final try, I don’t want you to wait any longer...even though I probably should’ve done that because my head isn’t in the right place today. You know how yesterday I said I wasn’t freaking out about uni at all? Yeah, I spoke too soon.
It’s under the cut because I talked too much, but here’s a TL;DR: Basically other ships just inspire me more, Miracle and Adam are bland compared to them. Also, Miracle’s storyline has some moments I’m not proud of.
I guess I don’t like them as much anymore because they don’t really have anything to offer. They’re a cute, happy, perfect couple, but that’s kind of it? I’m not saying good, happy couples are bad irl, it’s just that when I’m reading something and that’s the only thing I can say about a ship, then it’s not a ship I enjoy as much as others. I think Miracle and Adam might be too perfect. Even the best couples get into arguments sometimes, but they never had to face anything like that.
Let’s look at my other ships, the ones I claim are my favourites. I’ll give you a few examples of what they offer other than “we’re cute and happy”. Might contain spoilers but eh, as always, when will I get around posting these stories anyway?
Tyler and Sharon: They both carry these insecurities and secrets they don’t tell anyone about, only each other. Tyler might seem very confident and whatnot and often makes fun of his siblings, but deep inside, he thinks that they’re all so much better than him. He also has this mindset of “if I’m not good at music, then I failed at everything”. I won’t go into detail about Sharon’s secrets because that’s something I would really like to reveal when the time is right but…let’s just say that there’s a lot beneath this “we’re a badass couple oh and we also joke around each other a lot and sometimes it looks like we hate each other but nope, we’re actually madly in love”. I also love how equal they are in their relationship, like screw the traditional roles, we can do whatever the hell we want in our household. And like I mentioned, there’s this whole music thing, their relationship is very impacted by that. Last but not least, I just love the chemistry and dynamics that they have, this playfulness, sarcasm and sass. They’re just fun for me to write about.
Ross and Caleb: Okay, I will admit, they do fall a little bit under the “cute and happy” category now, but what I love about them is their long history and how their relationship developed over the years. There’s been quite a few changes and ups and downs. They started off as very unlikely friends, where actually, at first the friendship was kinda one-sided and Caleb was just like “okay, whatever, I’ll play videogames with you”. Over time, they grew closer, then they grew apart during Ross’s worst years…and so on. I feel like I get into this every other week in an ask, so I won’t repeat it again, I’m sorry :D
Caleb and Rachel: (other Caleb. original Caleb. my Caleb. redhead Caleb.) Again, seemingly just another “cute and happy” ship, but I think it works in their case because of this irony, I guess you could say. Caleb actually doesn’t want much, he just wishes for a happy boring life with a happy little family where nothing extraordinary happens, but he got the exact opposite. At one point his life was totally awful (divorce with Angel, he found out he couldn’t have children, was fired, and I mean, even the alien abduction kinda sucked, let’s be honest), then things changed again (birth of Miracle) and now he’s learning to live with all that because there’s no way he’s getting that boring life he wished for. And then there’s this whole fact that he’s kind of grumpy and sad and always sees the worst, but then he meets Rachel, who is always smiling, and she shows him how to be happier too. They’re not complete opposites though, they both share many interests. And yes, they do fight sometimes. Remember when they found out Rachel was pregnant and Caleb didn’t want to believe it?
Zoey and Isaac: My two nerds I hardly ever talk about but they own my entire heart. The progress of their relationship is one of my favourite things in this Golden Days story that I’m writing. They become close friends in ts3 universe, help each other heal, then the whole parallel universe mess happens, Zoey is thrown into the ts4 universe (I’m trying to really simplify it here because this whole post is getting too long and we’re not even halfway through), finds this universe’s version of Isaac too and so on. He knows the things she’s gone through, he’s always there for her, she’s there for him too because he has his problems too. They’re dealing with a lot.
I could talk about Josie and Lucian too but it’s too early for that and who knows, maybe eventually I’ll find out they’re not actually one of my most favourite ships.
And I know what you might be thinking - “but Miracle and Adam had a story too! They struggled too! ” Yeah, they had and yeah, there were struggles. But after that, they turned/I turned them into your generic happy cute couple. It’s partially because of the mess that gen 5 was, there just wasn’t space for any more interesting development.
I think one reason why I don’t like them as much anymore is Miracle’s storyline as a whole. I don’t connect to it as much as I did when I wrote it. It was really influenced by how I was feeling back then and I just didn’t know any better. Without getting too personal and sad, if I wrote it today, some things would be vastly different.
Yeah, Adam was a nice guy who turned out to be dating a mean girl, that’s kind of a cliche but whatever. Sometimes I enjoy cliches in a way. I would be cool with that, even though it’s dumb and, well, a cliche.
The thing that bothers me the most is the mixed message about insecurities. So yeah, Miracle doesn’t think she’s pretty, she thinks everyone would hate her if they knew she was half-alien (because that’s how it was for her at school before) and has low self-esteem because of that. And yes, there are people who are terrible to her because of that. But her friends and the people who matter (her family, Adam, Billie and Ed) would never give a damn about it, first and foremost they like her for who she is - a nice, kind, humble person. Then everyone finds out she’s half-alien, Adam then comforts her and tells her it doesn’t matter and that he actually loves her and she finally starts believing that okay, maybe it really doesn’t matter, maybe I’m pretty even though I’m not like the others.
At this point, if she had remained that way and just learned to love herself that way, that would’ve been fantastic and a great message. It’s also something I myself have learned in the past months. I don’t want to sound cheesy but yes, I found a way to love myself even though I’m not the definition of beauty standard in the slightest. (I know it’s not quite the same thing, but my relationship with myself was a big influence for Miracle’s storyline, so that’s why I used it as an example here.)
But no, I made it so that she still goes and finally changes into a fully human form. So yeah, people don’t mind her being half-alien, but still, let’s get rid of that aspect, it’ll be easier or something. A non-story reason why I did this is simply because I once found out what she would look like without the alien eyes and liked it a lot and wanted her to look like that in the legacy, which…I guess again contradicts this whole “you’re beautiful no matter what” message. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to talk about these things.
I kinda hate the fact that she only started believing in herself after a guy she loved told her to. Like…okay, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in real life, but wouldn’t it be so much more satisfying if she realized that on her own? She would get so much stronger. What actually happened in the story didn’t get rid of her insecurities, in my opinion, she just hid them for years (until one day, she understood there are things in life that matter more than what she looks like - see Regan’s story in gen 6). 
There was also this damsel in distress aspect of her story at that point where Esme and god-knows-what-his-name-was find out who she is, threaten to beat her up (which is something I’m not proud of writing, that was too much and surely I could’ve done something else about it), suddenly Adam storms in and beats the guy up instead (which, let’s be real, is very much out of his character, but hey this damsel needed a knight to save her I guess - god, this bothers me so much).
Alright, so that happens, they move out of the dorm into their own house with Billie and Ed (that’s another relationship I have issues with, but that’s a story for another day)…and they turn into this exact happy perfect couple that doesn’t really inspire me to write anything about, except for maybe late night nightmare and comforting short stories. There’s not really anything else. Adam lowkey didn’t have a personality, Miracle is just a good girl who now doesn’t have to deal with what used to haunt her, and every interesting thing I could start a story about is gone. There are not even any good opposites about them, nothing in their personalities that would clash and make for interesting conflicts.
Wow, this was long and I’m getting lost in it. I didn’t think it would be so hard to talk about it, but it was hard. In my head, I know exactly how I feel about them, but then putting it down is difficult. Still, thank you for asking, it was interesting for me to go back to them.
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