Tag: adalind schade

I’m starting to really believe Nick and Juliette are endgame. She’s obviously still in love with him so he only has to wake up. I wonder if the stick went near Adalind if she would be fixed back to her normal self rather than this fakery going on. It was powerful magic that changed her and Juliette and it’s not fully undone yet. My heart broke when I saw her in the tunnels by herself under where he lives.

I feel like we got a pretty solid glimpse in that last episode of Nick’s lingering feelings for Juliette as well. I’m not sure how much they’ll explore this in the next two episodes, but this synopsis makes me think we’ll definitely see more development between the two of them in episode 11. (Thanks for sending me the link, @teamrebecchi !)

The thing about Adalind, though…I don’t necessarily want to see her revert back suddenly to being bad but I’m not sure what else they could do that would make sense. At this point the changes in Adalind were either powerful magic or shitty writing, but either way they’ve let it go on too long and played it too sincere without saying or even implying anything in canon that would make it clear that it’s the former.

And I just wish if they were going to try to redeem her character they had even made an attempt to actually earn it. Because they could have done a real, sincere redemption arc and shown incredible character development. Or, they could have had her go good temporarily due to magic before reverting back, and kept the amazing antagonist while adding an almost tragic storyline, a kind of “we got a glimpse of what she could have been” situation.

But neither of those things is possible now, and with only five episodes left I don’t know that there’s anything the writers could do at this point that would completely fix her character arc. The writers have ruined Adalind’s story, and it’s a shame, because the character was interesting and complex, and Claire Coffee’s performance has always been amazing.

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.

Honest question…how can you support Eve when she pretended to be Renard and slept with Rachel (who had no knowledge/gave no consent)? Yet judge Adalind for the same exact thing? AND in Adalind’s case, it was about a mother trying to get her child back. Her baby was stolen from her which is the most horrible thing that can happen to a mother, yet you give her zero understanding but give Eve/Jul a pass…if you are going to judge everyone by equal standards, do the same for both Eve/Adalind.

Hi Anon! That’s a very good question, and one I’ve already answered in this blog post last year.

To sum up: Adalind did what she did while grieving and scared and under duress, but she did still have choices. Not good ones, maybe, not easy ones, but they were there. At no point was it impossible, literally impossible, for her to say no. And yet she went to Nick’s house disguised as Juliette with the full intention of raping him, and did not hesitate even once.

Whereas when Eve slept with Rachel, she did not have choices. She did not have emotions, or wants, or needs, or an identity of her own. She literally had all of that beaten out of her and replaced with Hadrian’s Wall’s mission and orders. She went to Rachel for information, not with the intention of sleeping with her. And when she did, it was because that is what HW needed her to do to get the information they needed, and what HW needed was her only choice. She couldn’t say no. She couldn’t make another decision. She was literally brainwashed.

As for understanding…I don’t think it’s fair to say I give Adalind zero understanding. I remember the way she grieved when she lost Diana, and how she looked everywhere for help and found none, and I felt for her. I really did.

But feeling for her plight as a mother didn’t make me forget for one second how she got to that point in the first place: how Diana was the result of Adalind sleeping with Sean while he was under the influence of a spell that she set into motion, which compromised his ability to give consent.

How she had already attacked Nick, his family, and his friends multiple times. Including Juliette, who had been nothing but kind to her, and Hank, who she also raped back in season one, by that point.

How they were entirely unwilling to help her for very good reasons, however pitiful she might have looked in that moment, because they also remember how everything got to this point.

How it was her own unspeakably selfish, heartless plan to sell her child that put the royals and the Resistance onto Diana in the first place. How Diana only has the powers she does because of the dangerous magical rituals Adalind underwent while pregnant with her.

How it’s the fallout and consequences of Adalind’s own scheming and lashing out that has caused the most pain for her, for Nick, and for Juliette throughout this entire show. And how whatever the show says about hexenbiest powers and how they affect people, she did quite a lot of those things while she had no powers at all.

So I do have understanding for Adalind, just no excuses. And I do judge Adalind and Juliette by the same rules. People just don’t like it when I point out that Adalind is to blame for her own bad behavior and its consequences, whereas Juliette is not to blame for things she did while literally brainwashed out of her mind as Eve.

I just wrote a really long post on one of your response to an ask. I’m really sorry if it offended you or is an inconvenience. It is just that i was getting tired of all the ship wars. Going into the tags becomes exhausting instead of fun. The nadalind shippers going after juliette and the nickette shippers going after adalind. They are both amazing characters whose storylines are not nicely handled by the writers. So anyway i’m so sorry that i high jacked your post.

No worries! Believe me, I feel you on the ship war exhaustion. I don’t even go into the fandom tags for certain characters or ships anymore because I know I’m not going to see anything but wank.

That being said, it’s worth noting that opponents of Nadalind sometimes have very good reasons for why they feel the way they do about that ship. There’s a whole Marianas Trench of difference between “I don’t like this ship, it’s not my bag” and “one of these characters raped the other one and therefore the thought of them in a romantic or sexual relationship squicks me the hell out and sends a terrible message that perpetuates rape culture.” I’ve even heard from multiple fans that they were too triggered by the show taking it canon to continue watching last season. So. Just gonna leave that there.

But in the interest of helping people avoid The Discourse surrounding the whole Juliette/Adalind/Nadalind/Silverhardt mess the show and fans have gotten snarled into, maybe a tag specifically for that would be a good idea? That way if you want to blacklist it you can, and this can at least be one blog where you don’t have to see any more of that ongoing discussion/argument if you don’t want to. Because we really try to stay away from pitting women against each other or engaging with ship wars, but…well, it comes up in the asks a lot (like enough that we started deleting what were basically the same questions/comments being submitted over and over), and I’m an argumentative little shit who can’t not give 5000-word responses when I strongly disagree with something someone has written. So. 

The tag will be “hexendebate” (all one word to make sure it’s caught by Tumblr Savior and the like), and it will be added to any posts, reblogs, replies, or ask answers that veer into comparing/contrasting/pitting the two women or ships against one another.

mygeekculture:

fuckyeahnickburkhardt:

scoundrels-in-love
replied to your post “A WILD MEISNER APPEARS”

The only person I ever shipped Adalind with.

SAAAAME. Is it sad I have this glimmer of hope suddenly that now that he’s back, all this nonsense will be righted and they’ll end up together after all somehow?

I mean I just feel like…they brought out the best in each other, really.

How did they bring out the best in each other? They spent hardly any time together. Furthermore, Adalind resisted her Hexenbiest nature because of her love for Nick. Yes she has done some pretty awful stuff, but so has Juliette. I’d say that Juliette has done even worse stuff. She burned down the trailer, she got Kelly killed. Also, no way Meisner is just back. Unless there are a bunch of Meisner clones or something.

It’s true, they only spent a few days together. But those few days were packed with a lot. Meisner took care of Adalind. He helped her when she needed it the most, and asked her for nothing in return. I wonder how often she’s come across that in her life? Probably not often.

In the short time they spent together, they brought out a soft side in each other that we hadn’t seen before from either of them. Adalind trusted him with her life, and he didn’t let her down. I think it would be hard to say they didn’t leave a lasting impression with each other, too, considering he was thinking about her two years later, and the way she reacted when she heard his name.

As for the rest…I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Adalind resisted her Hexenbiest nature for Nick. She specifically said she wanted to be better for her unborn child. And to say that Juliette did worse things than Adalind is just…Juliette never raped anyone, I’ll leave it at that.

Here’s the thing about culpability: if Juliette is fully to blame for everything she did as a hexenbiest, then so is Adalind. But if you go with what the writers have done as of last season, being a hexenbiest in general–not just under the weird magical circumstances that led to Juliette’s transformation–causes a person to do horrible things that they would never do without that destructive influence. Which means if Adalind isn’t culpable for her actions while she was a hexenbiest, neither is Juliette.

But Adalind is still culpable for everything she did while she wasn’t a hexenbiest. Which included, in case anyone has forgotten, putting that gross spell on Juliette and Sean that, if it hadn’t been reversed, would have literally caused them to basically rape each other to death against their will. Oh, and also planning to sell her baby to people she didn’t know and who would do god knows what to it in order to get those powers back.

Juliette is no perfect saint, but there is both textual and subtextual proof that she is not fully culpable for her actions after she was transformed into a hexenbiest. Whereas Adalind? Lost her powers and kept right on doing things just as bad as she did when she had them.

But far more interesting to me is why comments about Adalind always, always end up getting replies that are about how Juliette is somehow worse. Even when the comment that was made isn’t remotely derogatory, accusatory, or otherwise negative toward Adalind. Like seriously…why is that?