I’m not sure if this has been addressed already. But I’ve seen some n*dalind shippers say that Juliette/Eve could also be a rapist (when she turned into Renard and had to sleep with Rachel.) What do you think?

Hi Anon! Yes, we’ve addressed this twice now at FYNB: here and here.

Look, a lot of people in fandom seem to want to make this some kind of weird reverse competition: my ship isn’t that bad because this other ship is just as unhealthy! My fave isn’t problematic because look at the awful things your fave has done!

The implied goal of these kinds of questions and arguments seems to be “gotcha! see! you can’t criticize my faves anymore because you like this character who has done bad things as well!”

But it doesn’t work like that. One character’s evil actions do not become less abhorrent because another character committed similar actions. One relationship does not become healthier because another unhealthy relationship exists.

And that’s even if you assume we’re comparing like situations and dynamics, which 90% of the time when these things come up, we’re not.

You can’t look at someone with free will and someone without it committing the same action and say they’re equally culpable. You can’t discount one character’s canonical history of sexual violence and erase another’s canonical history of kindness and selflessness and then imply someone else is being “unfair” to the characters.

Just like you can’t excuse one character’s actions while under the influence of dark magic and condemn another character for their actions while under the influence of the same dark magic.

Well, I mean…you can, but it becomes pretty clear at that point that the goal is not to reach some kind of internal fandom character treatment consistency, but rather to shame or confound anyone who doesn’t like your problematic fave into silence.