#frog prince and his elodie

[underwaterbanshee]

Like, no wonder Elodie joined a troupe of nihilistic-burn-the-world-queens. Everything in that vulnerably brutal conversation with Gerard leads me to believe that she knows exactly what the plan is--a true fucking ending.

Elodie experienced the slow, devastating rot of falling out of love with her husband after happily ever after and then had to find his dead half-mutated frog body after he was in a battle against Cinderella’s fairy god mother.

No one warned her about that story within a story.

Of course it destroyed her to know that the cursed frog she so easily and simply fell in love with, whose curse she broke with a kiss to the top of his slimy froggie head, was dead in a battle he didn’t sign up for and had no business being a part of in the first place.

Snow and Cinderella probably didn’t have to try very hard to convince her.

And honestly, it isn’t a hard sell.

Princess, you are forever stuck in a story where you will repeat the same events, feel the same emotions, go through the same highs, the same lows, and some details will change, but the ending won’t. Some versions are happier than others but literally, because of reasons, the worse it is, the more drama you experience, the better the story.

We have a way to end it, but we need your help. Are you in?

Elodie looks at the body of her true love at her feet, puts her kite shield on her back, hefts her mace, and without shedding a tear looks Cinderella in the eye and says, Fuck these fairies. I’m not doing this again.

And then Gerard has the audacity to be alive and apologize? He talks about doing it over like it is normal to want and possible to achieve. This fucking frog prince.

[uproariousscarecrow]

"My desire to sort of keep our happy ending meant that I was pretending that bad times weren't here, and that meant that I wasn't there for you in the bad times... I'm rambling, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

[mutechild]

BLORBO!!!

[unlicensedinvestigator]

prince consort gerard of greenleigh, formerly a frog, and soon to be a frog again

[france-talks]

next ep is gonna be so painful elody will try to say gerard’s name and nothing will come out :,(((

[feelingtheaster99]

And now Rapunzel’s being mean and emotionally manipulative and rude to Gerard and I CANNOT stand it

[majorkphob]

Guys I'll be real idk if I can be normal about Elody and Gerard....

[ispridestillasin]

thinking about the gerelody ideas that i have locked in the vault of my mind that will never see the light of day

[atimeforclues]

sound off everybody how long do we think gerard was a frog for the first time. i’m going seven years

[embraceyourdestiny]

Bruh I just started rewatching neverafter and now I find a frog prince named Murphy in the Valentine’s Day section, someone’s got their eye on D20 and is taking notes. AND he was surrounded by a bunch of exact replicas of himself. The symbolism is too real.

[finaltennessee]

okay but what’s gonna happen to princess Clara

[radiocrypt-id]

Elody is tragic, I think, in a way that feels very close to home?

She's a woman that met someone interesting and strange and became friends with him, happy to have a friend around, since her parents are too sick to be in her life all the time. She was a little girl forced to grow up so fast, to take every type of class and feel the weight of her station on her shoulders every day, growing closer to the time she has to step up and take over, desperate to be deserving of the title. Desperate to do her parents proud.

And she's got this friend now, this sweet, gross little frog that talks and says he's a prince. His story is a strange and sad one, one she maybe can't fully understand but offers what support and sympathy she can. If she even believes him, I'm not sure she really does. And he's funny. He makes her laugh, reminds her of the fun of the world, encourages her to take care of herself and enjoy things as often as possible, reminds her to be young and happy and live freely. And she needs that. She needs someone to look her in the eyes and tell her it's okay to be a kid. It's okay to play with her ball in the woods and it's okay to sing and dance and get dressed up and do the fun parts of being a princess. He brings her joy that she hasn't had in a long time. She loves that about him, how fun and silly and clumsy he is, it's charming. She falls in love with that silly frog.

But then Snowhold comes. They have no allies, their armies are failing, their people are dying and she's up all night going over maps and strategy at a table of advisors and generals and is so stressed and trying so hard. But her silly frog is still a silly frog. He thinks about balls and good food and safe castle walls. He tells her to relax, enjoy a meal, gossip about the nobles, have fun. He hasn't changed. But she's being forced to change. Now that silly levity isn't charming and fun, it's frustrating. She doesn't have time for games and can't see how hard he's trying to make her smile. She needs a Prince, a man to stand beside her at the war table and talk tactics and look for ways to save their home and people. She needs a fighter, a hero. But Gerrard has never been a hero, he's a frog. Elody was the hero. She saved him. And she's so exhausted by being the hero. She's always taking care of someone else. She just wants to be taken care of. She just wants help. It's hard to love someone the same way in times of trouble. It's hard to find the space in all the stress and work to love Gerrard the way she did when they met.

Elody does still love him though. She does. It's a painful sort of love, in believing that he's never going to change and be what she needs him to be, in that she's always going to be the hero for him. But she loves him. She carries a shield with a lillypad on it, she wields a mace with the golden ball as part of it, she's actively carrying him with her. She's thinking of her silly little frog and hoping he's safe, where ever he's gone to hide and when it's all over, when she's saved everyone and made everything better, she'll go find him again. And then she can take him to a ball, like he wanted. She wishes he was different, but doesn't think he'll change.

Imagine what she'll find, when they meet again? Her silly little frog is still silly and clumsy and thinking about her constantly, but he's a hero now. He fought and died with his friends. He's twice upon a time. He's been Outside, in The Lines Between. He's a fighter now, he's brave, he's friends with death itself. He's a commander, great at group tactics, vital to their group. And he's got a couple kids around him, that he's exhausted by but loves in some way. He scolds them and encourages them and he's kind of a dad? And he's been looking for her, not hiding. He's been trying to find her since he left, regretting leaving her behind but really not sure how he would have helped. And he loves her, god he loves her. Even as he turns into a frog from her falling out of love with him, Gerrard loves Elody. He loves her enough to be brave, to learn the things he never got a chance to learn before, to take care of others.

Elody is so loved, and she has no idea. She loves him enough to take care of everything by herself, holding onto what parts of him she has space for during this horrible time. But Gerrard loves her enough to die trying to find her.

She has to be his hero, she never had a choice in that, but unlike most cases in life, he's trying to be her hero too, and she has no idea.

[unlikablefemaleprotagonist]

i don't really want to get too logical about it, but perhaps another "above the table" reason for this battle not being centered around getting redemption for the ratgrinders is because this is a show meant for public consumption and "persuade your enemies to desert their cause and join you" was literally the trick of the final combat for the last intrepid heroes season. maybe there was an implicit understanding among the cast that the same gimmick would be perceived by some as being repetitive

and honestly?? i think the neverafter team had a helluva lot better shot converting the princesses to their side than any of the bad kids had in this battle. key members of the squad (okay, not tim, rip his conversation with rapunzel) made inroads with the princesses through good faith interaction with many of them earlier in the season. elodie and mira were the easiest gets because of elodie's history with gerard and mira's lack of true devotion to the cause, but ylfa had a genuine SHOT with la bete and pinocchio got very close with cinderella (who i think may have come over anyway once her allies were down, if i remember right?)

but there isn't a single ratgrinder they have that kind of relationship with. they've been pretty out-and-out hostile, despite moments such as adaine saving ruben from disintegrate and kristen offering maryanne gifts. maaaaybe you could make an argument for ruben and wanda, but brennan pointed out that once wanda showed up with his enemies and ATTACKED ruben's friends, it was over. oisin seemed like a potential option earlier in the season, but then he pulled the rug out from under adaine and tried to murder the entire student body via nepotism. there was no friendly relationship left to capitalize on after that. and maryanne has been characterized as having such an impenetrable mental wall that it's hard to guess where's she's at, even for the other ratgrinders.

plus, there's the whole basic conceit that the ratgrinders' minds are not completely their own. their agency has been traded away to a nameless god of rage. who's to say any persuasion check could overcome that? honestly, i think if it was a realistic play, brennan would have encouraged the players to try it, like he explicitly did for neverafter, laying out a mechanic for it. maybe we'd know more if kristen hadn't gotten a nat 1 on her buddy insight check, but i think that was the moment that any diplomatic level to this combat went out the window, because the dice dictated that kristen couldn't see buddy in there, and to willfully push ahead with that line of thinking would have been close to meta-gaming. they are playing characters as faithfully as possible, and those characters are stressed-out kids! they don't have the same emotional maturity of a 32-year-old divorced frog prince who really wants to be amicable with his ex-wife

[whookami]

‘The Frog Prince’, their story, their book, currently rests inside Gerard. If Elody wants to stay allied with the other Princesses, part of that means committing to destroying her book once they get their hands on the ink.

The other Princesses conceivably can get their hands on their books through other means, but the way it’s shaping up, the only way for Elody to get ‘The Frog Prince’ back might well mean killing Gerard. We don’t even know if Gerard himself can willingly call forth his book, do we?

Still, while the Princesses aren’t worried about the fact that Destiny’s Children escaped, they want Rosamund back to be their seventh Princess, and unbeknownst to them they want Gerard back to get his book, since it’s also Elody’s. How is all this supposed to get wrapped up in like… what, five episodes? ‘Giants’, Faries, Princesses, Baba Yaga, Arthurs, the Gander… this is A LOT.

[unlicensedinvestigator]

wip

featuring post and pre divorce arc

[underwaterbanshee]

Look, until Elodie shows up, I want to believe that the reason she doesn’t talk about her coward, frog husband is because her grief is too much.

She is a princess, with a beautiful golden ball that fell into a pond, that when the time came for her to step up and defend her people against giants, she fucking stood up. She is a princess with a golden mace who did everything she could for crown, country and people.

Elodie fell in love with the flower boy next door and it was true. She knows it was true because Gerard was always a little soft and silly but he made her laugh, proved to her that she wasn’t a shallow, spoiled princess, and when she kissed the top of his frog head, he turned into a handsome prince.

How do you explain that story to a group of women whose princes never showed up during the times of darkness?

Gerard, despite the fact that he flinches at loud noises, doesn’t like dogs, and snaps way too quickly at the staff, is a prince who showed up and their story is mostly about falling in love.

Elodie can relate to Snow and Cinderella when it comes to battles and dead mothers and living for a cause to thwart destiny but I have to believe she is grieving the loss of her true love.

And that’s not something the other princesses have had and lost. Elodie isn’t twice upon a time yet. She might have been enlightened in some way but she’s still the previous world’s Elodie.

Which makes her unique.

No wonder Gerard is able to put his book away and hope that he has a chance at being a part of Elodie’s story again. Their story was good the first time. He knows what it is that they have to lose--they both do.

And maybe, that is a destiny worth stealing from the authors.

But what do I know? I’m just a hopeless shipper romantic.