sergle · 1 year ago
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Why is black a High Commitment Color?
That's something I'd award to literally anything lighter than your original color, which requires you to remove your skin, uh, I mean, bleach your hair first.
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roominthecastle · 6 years ago
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I can't help but think you're being a bit too hard on Eleanor because of ship bias. I mean, why would you called her 'her worst self' and 'selfish' when she's always been one to throw stuff to get in heaven (even with the character development)? But suddenly she's being sappy and depending on someone who isn't Michael and the whole M/E fandom is at her throat. I'm as unconfortable as the next shipper with all the C/E scenes but is it really Eleanor and her characterization that's at fault?
Yes, of course I am biased (to a certain degree). When the show caters to my preferences, I’m more docile and much less likely to nitpick and complain, when it doesn’t and it drops the ball to boot, I get grumpy. So I’m your garden variety fan, basically. But I don’t believe I’m “at Eleanor’s throat”. Her and Chidi being together doesn’t make me uncomfortable bc it’s her and Chidi and not her and Michael (+ I often see things popping up in the C/E dynamic that can have potentially interesting implications for Michael’s development and for M/E, too. Generally speaking, the three of them make up a curious whole for me).
I know the chances of (2-sided) M/E happening are somewhere btw zero and never, so I’m not exactly eyeballing C/E as some kind of obstacle to my personal shipper nirvana, jumping at any chance to “punish” Eleanor for choosing the “wrong” partner. But I do feel uncomfortable with the way the C/E romance is written this season. “They are sidelining my no. 1 dynamic”, while frustrating, is not the reason for this, it’s not why I’m not crazy about Eleanor’s behavior and Chidi’s OOC-ness.
Eleanor + character development always resulted in stuff like her being emotional and vulnerable w/o getting aggressive and demanding, her accepting it when Chidi turned her down w/ dignity despite feeling heartbroken, and her being considerate of others to the point of volunteering to go to the Bad Place to save them. This is where she was a year ago and the year before that at the end of each season. This is not where she is now. I’m not saying being selfish and throwing stuff is not in her character make up or her problem-solving toolbox. Her overcoming these impulses, however, is the very point of her character development (made blindingly obvious last season when she lied about passing the Judge’s test and refused to go through the portal to TGP). What we have (currently! so it can change any time) in S3 is the opposite (see the in-your-face door to TGP that won’t open for her), it’s her completely giving in to these impulses to the point of seriously endangering everyone, meaning that she has, in fact, regressed. I suspect it is a point the show is trying to make but we’ll have to wait and see.
In “Janets”, all Janet asks is that they stay put until she and Michael deal w/ accounting. Eleanor works herself into a state over Chidi not opening up to her on command, putting Janet through hell and almost erasing her friends from existence while her own self is also disintegrating. Despite the serious consequences, this harmful behavior carries right over into the next ep where all Michael asks is that they lay low bc folks in TGP are so rule obsessed, they can send all of them right back to TBP. Eleanor immediately smashes stuff at the door to TGP bc it doesn’t open up for her when she demands it. It’s her bullying of Chidi from the previous ep all over again, only in a vase-meets-door form. Even Chidi has to be all about her now as he magically turns into a grossly idealized version of himself (see in S2 how she rejected a similar “fake Chidi”), spending the entire ep trying to prevent her from blowing up again while the rest of the team is cleaning up the mess in the mail room and Michael is away trying to fix the calculation issue. Despite the crazy-intense circumstances, everybody is trying to do something for somebody else except her - she is still hyper-focused on herself and it stands out to me bc this is a version of her I’ve never seen before and it’s def not the best one.
Again, it’s not because she is w/ Chidi but the issues become especially apparent within that dynamic since the second Michael showed her those memories, she just latched onto Chidi, expecting him to fill the void left by her screwed up upbringing that’s been freshly dredged up thanks to her not-dead mother. They made her lurch from “I’m incapable of love” to “I’m madly in love and nothing else matters”, hand-waving determinism while failing to provide any other reason why these 2 are suddenly together again. They are trying to play it as romantic/funny but it’s not romantic when someone’s whole identity has to be propped up by another person and it’s not funny how that other person has to repress his own identity/issues to be able to do this. It’s a suffocating, unsustainable interplay. Or if it’s meant to be interpreted as “love cures mental illness and erases every character flaw in 5 minutes, so you can finally be the proper romantic partner”, then it’s even worse. You don’t have to be a shipper of another ship or look too deep into this story to see these (imo) legitimate problems (but it helps, yes, since it’s natural to be more critical of sth you’re not emotionally invested in and gloss over stuff to preserve the fun potential when it’s your OTP or sth, I do give you that).
Eleanor having to coerce love and attention out of Chidi will never be cute, either, or proof that those feelings were there all along. People pushed some quotes from WJH into my face about how Chidi calms down bc he finally has what he always wanted - interesting choice of words, btw, given the pin Michael gave Eleanor - but 1) an actor’s opinion will not automatically replace my own (no, not even if it’s Ted’s or some other big fave’s) and 2) how exactly were we supposed to glean that Chidi wanted to be with her so much in this reboot? Was it when he went steady w/ another woman despite Eleanor being an option all along? was it when he refused to give private lessons to her bc he was just too busy? or was it when he - despite witnessing her meltdown - sent her packing bc they already had enough material for his study? For some reason the writers missed every opportunity to build this up properly and make this extremely syrupy display stick, but I’ve already said everything about that in another post.
This whole idea of “he felt this way all along, he just didn’t actually show it, so we can skip actual development” is a lazy, corner-cutting approach which reminds me of the worst kind of fanservice attempts I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing with several of my favorite shows recently. I have very low tolerance for that stuff now bc it never ends well. I did not expect to see this particular brand on this particular show, but here we are, I guess. Or if it’s a case of creative exhaustion/boredom where this billion times rebooted couple is concerned, then maybe it’s time to park them and give a not yet over-explored dynamic some attention instead to keep things fresh and fluid as opposed to stale and forced - again, not an unreasonable request, even if it comes from someone who is invested in another dynamic, given the lack of care that was apparently put into developing C/E this season.
I don’t like not liking things on this show (and it’s not Eleanor I don’t like, it’s the way they deconstructed her in order to write her back into a relationship as if she couldn’t exist w/o it), and I am sorry if I disappointed or offended bc it was not my intention. I hope they flip things or introduce a new angle that will make me re-evaluate. I am always open to that whenever new material arrives and I honestly hope they will make me eat my words soon. I will merrily absorb the suckerpuches. But for now, this is my opinion and “you just don’t like that she is not with your fave” - while a natural factor - is not the main reason why I made my comments.
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roominthecastle · 6 years ago
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I'm sure I'm biased, but I find myself so bored by Eleanor/Chidi these days. I'm not "anti" just... blah? There are such better options for both of them considering who they are now is so vastly different than in the afterlife realities where they had so much early growing to do. They were only together a fraction out of 800 times and I genuinely can't tell if the show is trying to sell us on the idea that they're ~*meant to be*~ or on the idea that Michael simply believes they're meant to be.
I’m leaning towards the latter. The universe doesn’t seem to care about who ends up w/ whom, and they never would have found each other if it hadn’t been for Michael’s constant meddling, which is esp apparent this season. Their world has expanded from a small, closed system into the entire real world that was impossible for Michael to micromanage. He had to keep nudging them every step of the way and they still didn’t get together romantically despite spending more than a year in close proximity. Revealing that they were together once feels like pressuring at this point. If it hasn’t happened on its own by now, why should it matter that they were an item one time (out of 800 versions)? I mean, I get it: Michael was (impulsively) trying to console Eleanor and give her solid evidence that she’s capable of having an intimate, loving relationship w/ someone, but he really did not think this through.
In “Jeremy Bearimy”, he is clearly desperate to keep Eleanor from walking away, yet he remains silent about their once supertight karaokee-shrimp-and-leaps-of-faith-filled broship or the sacrifices he’s made or the eternal suffering that awaits him in the afterlife if she doesn’t come back. He didn’t reveal that one time he was also willing to die for her, which is fortunate bc that would have been just as emotionally manipulative/vaguely coercive in that situation, imo. Instead, he offered to kill them all (I love this idiot) and when it was collectively downvoted, he let her go. This way when she came back and extended a Soul Squad membership offer to him and Janet, it was a choice that reinforced a previous one (her scrapping her plans to go to Mindy’s and making Michael a member of Team Cockroach in S2) but wasn’t dictated by it. This is also why I love that Janet didn’t tell Jason about their past right away. Instead, she’s trying to spend time w/ him and regrow their bond in a more natural way, so if they get together again, it will be bc they both want it and not bc it is somehow expected. This option is no longer available for E/C.
Also, there is Simone w/ whom Chidi broke up only bc he didn’t want to doom her. It was a serious, steady relationship. There wasn’t one second where he was remotely torn between her and Eleanor. And now we are back to that tiny closed system where his options are once again reduced to Eleanor or Tahani or books/celibacy, which has echoes of those multiple soulmate torture scenarios Michael ran on him in S2.
I am not an “anti”, either. I don’t even have notps on this show or any “shipping agenda” where canon is concerned, but at this point, C/E feels more like a long-winded experiment than a “meant to be” love story. Or maybe that’s the point? idk. I’m not sure what they are trying to do here and I am looking forward to seeing them tackle the determinism angle, but so far S3 hasn’t done this dynamic any favors.
One of the many things that are so enticing about Michael’s relationship w/ Eleanor is that it is presented as a result of actual, hard choices(*) mixed w/ sth instinctive/intuitive that allows them to quickly fall into an easy rhythm despite the reboots and despite how nuts it usually is (I mean, he will always be her ex torturer and he always makes sure she knows this one piece of info). And even as the stakes rise and various whacky challenges are hurled at him, Michael keeps choosing her (and the team) w/o hesitation, so the whole show is now a testament to his love. Other than that there is literally nothing else that’s keeping him from saying fuck this and settling down on some fancy beach to sip tasty margaritas for the rest of eternity.
(*) I know it’s said that Chidi always chose to help Eleanor in the reboots but to me that’s forever tainted by a compulsion which he characterizes as his “ethical duty” to help. This was what Michael was counting on when he designed this torture setup: Chidi’s pathological inability to say no. That and choice are not exactly synonymous. And on Earth Michael had to keep stepping in by telling him to help, to go back to the group, a group which still got disbanded in the end as Chidi clearly chose his career and Simone over Eleanor even after her plea and subsequent meltdown.
I am not trying to dish E/C, honestly. I think they have an excellent dynamic (that hasn’t been utilized much this season but there’s still time), I just don’t get the “meant-to-be soulmates!” hype around them or this fandom expectation that you must ship them hard. Then again, I never seem to be able to develop an obsessive interest in “big canon couples” in general, like I was never particularly invested in Jim/Pam on The Office and the relationship status of Jake and Amy is irrelevant to my love for B99 - friends or married? great either way (I did weep a little at their wedding tho bc I am weak and my dude Holt was bringing it). And I feel this same “okay” about romantic E/C, too.
And ofc we are biased. Like everybody else in every fandom always.
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