#some ppl really go 'these characters are having conflict' and automatically assume it's bad and

[raayllum]

I'll also chime in that post-s3 myself (and many others) were like "the only thing that could break them up is Rayla's tendency to leave and be hyper-independent / sacrificial because of trauma," because no matter how well meaning (Through the Moon) or heroic the show occasionally portrayed it (2x07), self destructive behaviour —especially of that kind — is never going to be conducive to a long term healthy relationship. So it wasn't.

I get not seeing her successfully leaving ahead of time, but anyone who thought she wouldn't try and that it came out of nowhere truly just wasn't paying attention to her character tbh, especially when the final episodes of season 3 (3x08, 3x09) reaffirmed this over and over again.

This was always going to be their biggest hurdle to jump (and in some lingering ways, they're still jumping it) and doing it during the timeskip makes the most sense from a character standpoint. Rayla's biggest issues was her inability to ask for or readily routinely accept help, and I don't know if that would've been believably unresolved for two years if she'd stayed in a healthy, loving relationship day in and day out. This way, we get to see her choices — to come back and keep coming back (4x03, 4x09), working on asking for help, learning to accept it — and her evolution happen first hand.

They also needed to grow to better understand each other. Callum couldn't understand leaving / the Moonshadow-ness of it all ("You're going to stay here and die out of pride?") and while he was often right to push back against it, it wasn't the environment Rayla could grow in, nor could she understand the full importance of staying till she chose to. The unconditional basis set up at the end of 4x09, loving and painful in equal measure ("I have to go after him" "...I know") is what allows her to flourish in S5 ("You can tell me when you're ready" -> "I know I trust you to help me carry this. If you're okay with that?") and S6, as well as for Callum to settled in his truth: come hell or high water, he loves her, and he always will ("It always was [a thing]. It was always her").

So just on an interpersonal level it makes sense; on a more S7 speculative mode, I've always thought that what makes the most sense plot wise is that both sides of their separation could provide the basis of justification for whatever batshit, world-ending crap they get up to in the Aaravos showdown.

Rayla's always loved and tried to protect Callum, but her biggest display of that by far was in leaving, even though it was the wrong choice; ergo, when Callum gets possessed and/or corrupted in S7, we'll understand her deep desire to protect him because we've seen it first hand, and she gets to prove it by Staying. On Callum's end, he had to live without her for 2 years, trying and failing to move on, and his happiness levels of her being gone / back (S4) vs her being back and him letting himself be happy about it (early S5 and onwards) is night and day. Of course he'll choose her over the greater good; he's tried to live without her once and he couldn't. He can't lose her again.

All of Arc 2 is about doing awful things for love, like leaving, or dark magic, and how there is an aching pain often mixed with love that cannot be escaped, but it must be wrestled with and acknowledged, and healed from. It's completely thematically coherent and always has been.

The writers didn't lightly make this decision just to stir up conflict. It made sense for the characters culturally, interpersonally, for their personal growth arcs, and for the overall plot. Y'know, the way Good Writing is supposed to work.

anyone who says tdp "ruined rayllum" can meet me in the denny's parking lot. i will truly never believe that the writers broke up rayllum (physically i mean) just as a plot contrivance. this is not me defending my favorite show and my favorite ship; i genuinely believe this was the right move. even when i was young and dumb and first heard about an arc 2 i was like "pff rayllum isn't gonna break up," and yet in the back of my mind i was just wondering how are they gonna pull this off? like i loved them and i know they loved each other and they were sweet little babies blah blah blah but you cannot sit here and tell me that the two 15 year olds who went through a whole shitload of trauma and grief together and who were already killing themselves for each other out of hopeless devotion within 2 weeks weren't bound to crash and burn. people seem to forget that rayla didn't simply decide to leave just because; she was being tormented by her unresolved issues and could not stand to be in that place anymore, no matter how much she loved callum. of course she left because a) that's all she's ever known and b) because they couldn't last (how they were, anyway). rayla and callum had grown to rely on one another so much that they needed time to grow up on their own, and now, well...

there is no better way to test love than to put it through the ringer and see if it survives, and rayllum not only love each other just as much if not more, truly understand each other on a whole new level despite having been apart for so long, and now are back together and stronger than they've ever been. it was entirely logical and frankly inevitable for this to happen, it was a natural progression for the story, and it has made them better.

[janiedean]

@nederys all of you guys kinda lost your shit but i don't think you're being consistent at all. you didn't go for it being misinformed or wrongly placed, just that it was "gross" bc it was "romanticizing" blabla, like if someone made a fic about ETA terrorists or whatever and i advocated censorship and asked for it not to exist. when you accept kink and RPF, you need to stand on that principle even when it's YOUR personal/national. shaming ppl into submission is the anti strategy and it doesnt actually convince anybody of anything, much literally if it's screaming in another language to the OPs. i didnt wanna reblog or anything but i was very unpleasantly surprised with how you guys handled the situation (and i say this bc i care and i know you value rationality, not to piss you off YOUR personal/national sensibility like if someone wants to write a fic 'romanticizing' tec bundy murders or a rape fantasy or whatever it's their field day just tag it properly, it's no different for a criminal organization as i see it. a piece of sexual fantasy or literary work is not a guarantee it's portrayed in an accurate way or that it's a moral endorsementj + I'll hear your argument on 'positive representation' so i'll take your word for now but it did really come of like "your evil porn is romanticizing evil irl so it should be censored". as for the bad taste etc thing - as long as the person in question doesn't find out i dont personally see the harm. other ppl getting second-handed distastefulness/offense about it is a slippery slope, bc again that quickly devolves into "ugh why you write about rape! / rpf! if you can write kink porn and you can do rpf (like i mean, what, we just tweak the hair color and the initials to make it 'fictional'?) - it follows you can write "distasteful" kink porn about rpf all you want. it's still fiction.okay in order

In order:

as I said in the other reply, people lost their shit because we’ve had this discussion for years and every time it happens SOMEONE (most likely american but not necessarily) shows yup informing us that since mafia in US english means generally organized crime and not THAT specific organized crime we need to chill and WHO CARES YOU’RE OVERREACTING. at some point there’s a limit to how much nice you can be when you’ve been trying nicely for years and people just dismiss you most likely also because you’re not poc enough to complain - again, when it happens with people who can fall into the POC definition doing this kinda stuff automatically means you’re racist, but with us it’s not even disrespectful? or recognized as potentially harmful? fine, we lost our shit, but it’s also not the first time it happens;

the point isn’t that they were making a fic about the mafia, but if we take the ETA terrorism similitude, it wasn’t ‘making a fic abut ETA’. it was, ‘we are making an RPF fic where we take a real living spanish actor who has a friend who died during an ETA bombing and we make him the commander of an ETA faction which plants a bomb in madrid’. I’d find it distasteful if it was about FICTIONAL CHARACTERS, but whatevr - it’s fictional. real people who are actually involved with those criminals on the other side? not so cool. and the fact that these people see nothing wrong with casting them as criminals for *the mafia* shows they have no idea of what they’re talking about and again, with fictional people you can try to ignore it (even if it irks me also because 90% of the time it shows a total failure of understanding the character just by casting them as mafiosi but never mind that’s my pet peeve), but real ones? who made a pro lgbt movie and are *allies* when a mafia killing actually was what kickstarted the creation of the hugest and first anti-homophobia/pro-gay lgbtq association in italy? like. that’s fucking with real people and honestly if I was the director and knew I’d feel personally slandered especially if I come from someplace where statistically everyone knows someone who’s been hurt by the mafia in the last fifty years if they weren’t themselves. like I had a friend whose father worked for the police and the antimafia division especially and lived in palermo back in the day and criminals did try to grab her out of her pre-school and they had to change cities VERY quickly after that, and I don’t even live in sicily. and she’s not even sicilian. it was twenty years ago when they planted bombs across the entire area and killed hundreds of people just in the 90s (comprehensive list). it’s not just WRITING FIC ABOUT THE MAFIA, which I could be relatively handwaving with if it was about fictional people and even then it irks me to hell and back, but real people? who make movies pro things that the mafia hates? really? and I have to hear ‘are you angry because you’re homophobes’? I don’t ask for it NOT TO EXIST, I’m asking a basic modicum of decency.

ted bundy vs mafia: ted bundy is ONE person and he’s been convicted and whatever. if someone’s personal fantasy is fucking ted bundy WHATEVER their problem. if THEY want to do the self-insert with real criminals whatever, idgi but if they’re aware of the implications whatever. the mafia is a bunch of people and they thrive on positive media representation and it’s such large scale that it fucks with this entire country on multiple levels (ad also other countries) and here you’re not using real criminals, you’re casting as criminals people who most likely have been hurt by that same organization. it’s a difference. and if you portray it as a nice organization where hey you help people bypassing the law and gay people are accepted it’s... just... not how it works.

rpf: I’m generally pro rpf as long as people don’t go to the actual real people and don’t harass them irl (which would make a lot of rpf shippers inappropriate) but like... idk if you were around in spn fandom at the time of the infamous j2 haiti fic, but if you weren’t, tldr: person sees the aftermath of the haiti earthquake on tv, thinks ‘well that’d make a perfect setting for my j2 bigbang fic’, writes an entire fic where jared and jensen go to haiti the month it happened, her artist makes art for it photoshopping those two over like... real pictures of real dead people and three betas don’t find nothing remotely cringy in this concept. the fic gets published. it gets slandered to hell and back and while I didn’t agree on assuming the author was a pre-trump (she most likely had no idea that stuff was kindaaa racist) and that she should have been educated, I’d like to presume that people would think thrice before setting a Romance Story TM on a background where when it was published people were still excavating corpses from the rubble. it’s about the same concept as the romantic mafia fic. but with the haiti fic anyone on tumblr would agree that it’s hardly appropriate, with mafia fic it’s just ‘meh shut up you’re whining’. also, while I do agree that jared and jensen, as famous people, signed up for this, too, I don’t really think using real people for this kind of thing is fair, educated or a favor to them. I get it’s all fantasy and so on, but at least use the fictional characters. I can imagine j2 wouldn’t be happy with knowing noncon fic where they’re protagonists exists, neither with the haiti fic, but the noncon is standard fandom kink and whatever and no one else is involved, the haiti fic DOES. and while the people in those pictures wouldn’t even know, if that’s what you jerk off to at least be aware that it’s not exactly tasteful. and the people mentioned had zero idea that jerking off to the *mafia* au is not tasteful and that the *mafia* is *not* random organized crime. no one would have a problem if they called them CRIMINALS or mob or whatever without using the specific mafia word, but they like it because AESTHETICS which 90% of the time aren’t even true because the godfather aesthetic is so NOT the camorra aesthetic it’s not even funny. and of course we shoudl educate people instead, too bad that if it’s about haiti they listen and if it’s about us, they don’t;

 kink: same as above but like, again, let’s always use the poor j2 guys. the j2 mafia au as above is absolutely ew to me but at least j2 are american and most likely didn’t grow up somewhere the mafia could kill their relatives or friends. guadagnino did. and whether he knows or not (HOPEFULLY HE NEVER FINDS OUT) it’s another level of disrespectful to take a guy who made a pro lgbt movie you liked and putting him in that scenario without being aware of it. and they don’t listen if you tell them. that’s the problem. I can be very tolerant, but good god at least hear people out on the subject. and if it concerns a situation that isn’t even old or a dead organization but one that’s thriving in the country still and fucks people over every day I’d like for these people to recognize that at least it’s something not cool and not just their jerk off fodder material. at this point do the GODFATHER AU, which is what they want anyway, stick with the american mafia and try to not give them positive rep, because this idea of the mafia as a cool thing plays a major role in actual mafia organization marketing themselves as a good thing and makes the work of people actually fighting them way harder. if no one thought it was cool, it wouldn’t have half the influence it has. but do I ever see mafia aus with cops or conflicted henchmen or the likes? nah. it’s all SAD ROMANTIC BACKSTORY WITH CRIMINALS. call it some other way. it’s not asking that much.

also: I am entirely down with mafia stories in media and stuff - again, I ove my sopranos and boardwalk empire and goodfellas and I actually do like the godfather when a lot of people here at this point hate it too, but none of those things make it look like it’s palatable to be in the mafia. people can jerk off to it I suppose, but at least they should be aware of that. lowering the bar, it’s why I get pissed at people passing jc as a healthy nice relationship - at least own up to your badwrong and don’t sugarcoat it. in this case they don’t even own up to the fact that it’s a real thing that hurts real people, never mind caring for the feelings of the people they’re fans of - I could jerk off to my rpf faves in anything but I’d like to know I’m not doing it to something they would loathe, and if you have to at least use the fictional characters as the jerk-off material. I mean I’d feel uncomfortable af using them as jerk-off material to something I know they as people would hate. obviously I’m pro write whatever you want, but I’m also pro ‘be aware of what you’re doing and know you’re possibly jerking off to things that are actually harmful to a lot of people and if you do and are cool with that whatever but at least try to not make it look as it’s a good thing’ while at the same time assuming that someone who tells you it’s not cool is doing it because they’re HOMOPHOBES when the mafia is the most homophobic organization in existence or close to it. we do need positive rep when it comes to mafia stories and we never get it.

like, final example: if I had seen one ‘steve rogers is a cop who wants to take down the mafia-like organization’ for every ten ‘tiny boss steve rogers and his russian henchman bucky are THE POWER COUPLE OF THE NY CRIME SCENE AND THEY KISS IN FRONT OF EVERYONE AND HELP THE WEAK WHEN THE POLICE SUCKS ASS’ fics I ran into it’d be lovely, but the point is that I’ve never seen one such fic even if it’s a lot more IC for steve rogers to take down criminals than being a criminal, and if you make people notice that nicely (which we did more than once) the usual answer is ‘go fuck yourself it’s just aesthetics the mafia doesn’t hurt anyone’ when it actually did, does and will do as long as they have means to, and since this recasting of canonically good characters as *mafia* henchmen who are happy to be there and not itching to get out just really makes pass the concept that the mafia isn’t really that bad I think I/we affected people have the rights to point out that it’s already a distasteful thing that people should at least read about before assuming it’s random organized crime that can be substituted for whichever worldbuilding they like, and if they don’t care for that fine, at least avoid involving real people who actually would loathe that irl in it or, if anything, at least recognize that it’s fucked up to hell and back. and none of the people in that thread had the grace to do that.

I mean, obviously if I had to take the choice between one such fic not existing at all but censoring stuff and it existing without censoring stuff I’d pick the latter even if I absolutely don’t like it, but what irks me and the other people involved in this debate is how nonchalantly people do these recasting assuming that they’re not romanticizing the thing (which they’re doing) and then don’t listen to others when they’re pointed out that they’re doing it and they should be aware.

like, again, I think the haiti fic was a thing that no one with some salt in their brain and a basic amount of decency should have published. someone did. they got criticized for it and it sprung a lot of discussion (including comparing it with a gen kill fic set in east timor during the war which actually did it right and so no one actually thought it was exploiting a tragedy or being in bad taste) and tbh I think that when doing fic about serious things you should at least read up on that. but the point is that these people don’t listen, haven’t listened for years and most likely will keep on not listening and sorry but seeing a person from palermo who shoots movies that would make any cosa nostra boss mad being recast as a cosa nostra/mafia sicilian boss who, if compared to a, uh, real life person who died recently would deal with people seceding from this organization by ordering to kidnap their children and have them dissolved in acid at the ripe age of nine is really goddamned distateful and hearing ‘so your problem is that they’re gay is that why you’re so angry��� as a response instead of reading it and thinking ‘damn maybe that was a bit out of line’ isn’t exactly that great.

especially because again, these organization thrive on people assuming they’re less bad than they actually are and we’re not talking about stuff that happened three hundred years ago - the kid dissolved in acid happened in 1996 and it’s hardly the last time something like that happened. it’s not a general crime organization, it’s a very specific one, and I’ll be fine with people jerking off to any italian stereotype in existence while I roll my eyes and be fine with it, but at least I’d like these people to know what they’re doing. and they aren’t. and they should be. and on top of that some positive rep where the mafia people are inherently bad and the good guys want to take them down would be nice. I do get that it looks like I’m being incoherent but I’m not saying they can’t do it, I’m saying they should show a minimum of consideration, and they aren’t. then no one’s stopping them from doing it of course but just the fact that they-won’t-listen kind of says a lot. :/ and when it comes to real people and real things it’s not just fiction and you should at least be aware of that.