#fun fact my dumb ass watched clips of 2x97 before running a netherdeep session where i had to do the kryn accent

[utilitycaster]

this might be a stupid question but the "floaty purple homewrecker" bit (and the upcoming nein show) reminded me - asking as someone relatively newish to the fandom who has watched the majority of c2, is there a reason why so many people on tumblr seem to like. irrationally hate essek to a very large degree? (i totally understand disliking a character! but the vehemence i've seen here surprised me.) i was just wondering if there was an explanation rooted in fandom history that you might be able to shed more light on as someone who's been around in this fandom longer.

As far as I can tell here the reasons:

People who shipped Caleb and Jester but who are smart enough to realize that an NPC is a safer target than a PC because you do look like a fucking asshole if you hate on Fjord or Jester, though they sometimes do that as well.

People who see shipping as a competition (already a mistake) but who specifically see it as a competition between different ships that are not inherently in conflict in terms of which characters are in them, which I have been informed may be the legacy of the Glee fandom. Anyway I have seen the opinion that like...Beauyasha was "supposed" to be the popular ship (I do not know what power decided it was "supposed" to be popular) and then Shadowgast was also very popular, and it's like. ok so they're both here and popular? win-win honestly. I do not get this mentality, but I have observed it from afar. These people also tend to hate Caleb, natch.

People who are not good at separating "the fandom for this is fucking annoying" and "this character is fucking annoying." To be fair, again, I absolutely am influenced by fandom to an extent and if a character is sort of annoying and the fandom is REALLY annoying, by the transitive property that character becomes really annoying to me. However, this doesn't work if I actually did like the character, only if I was neutral to lightly negative. Anywhere there are plenty of really annoying fans of Essek (the "IF HE DOESN'T SHOW UP AT THE LIVE SHOW I WILL DIE AND EXPLODE"/WHY DON'T PEOPLE TREAT THIS NPC LIKE A PC" variety) but like, get over it.

People who hate C2 for other reasons, which usually boil down to either being mad about Molly not being resurrected, being mad about other ships not mentioned above, or being mad that Caleb decided not to ruin his life and destroy the assembly in a big violent rampage (which, given the plot of C3, was probably doomed anyway in that Ludinus could probably have either curb-stomped him or just vanished, even if this wasn't also, thematically, a garbage take to begin with). Again, I think Essek makes a convenient scapegoat in that he is a major character and a member of the Mighty Nein but is not a PC nor a cast member.

Probably there are some people who genuinely dislike him for the war crimes but like. The war crimes are pretend and if you can watch 2x97 and not lose your mind at how good it is perhaps you have bad taste.

People who really just want an excuse to call someone a stupid twink for reasons I do not care to investigate; might be combined with one of the above or might just be kind of a hateful person.