#terry and the magefam basically

[sorinethemastermind]

Fluffcember 2024: Snowed In | Rayllum & Sorvus & Clauderry Callum is determined to ask Rayla to be his girlfriend this Winter Break. But if he can't even start a fire, how is he supposed to create the perfect moment? Soren has decided to stay on campus this Christmas, but with Rayla and Callum as his only company, he's starting to feel like a third wheel. Except maybe it's not just the three of them left on campus after all. Meanwhile Claudia is trying to have a nice Christmas with her family, but maybe her family isn't at home...

 Usually Terry would have loved to be snowed in with his girlfriend. He still loved to be snowed in with his girlfriend. His girlfriend’s family… not quite so much. 

 But what was a bad situation but a chance to make things better? Nowhere to go but up! That’s what he told himself, anyway, when Claudia suggested they all gather in the living room after dinner for a board game night.

 Viren had said he was busy and Lissa had muttered that he was always conveniently busy when it was time to spend time with his family, after which Viren had cheerily decided that he did, in fact, have time to play boardgames with them. In fact, he was going to take the rest of the day off from work to do just that.

 Claudia had beamed at them both and jumped up, clapping her hands together as she rushed around to gather various games from across the house and compile them in the living room.

 Now it was time. Dinner had been eaten (silently, except for Claudia) and the two girls were gathering some snacks from the kitchen before they began. Terry glanced out of the corner of his eye at Viren. He was scowling at his phone, swiping through messages as though each had personally wronged him. Terry did not want to be whoever he was texting. 

 He considered waiting for the man’s mood to brighten, but it rarely did. Here goes nothing, Terry thought. Or everything.

 “Ahem. Uh, Sir, uhm, Claudia’s dad?”

 Viren took a moment to finish what he’d been typing, exit out of the text thread, and turn off his phone before turning to face him. “Yes?”

 Terry shot a quick glance towards the kitchen, making sure that the others were still distracted. “I wanted to talk to you about Claudia.”

 “Oh? And what about her?”

 Terry swallowed, and then it all came out in a single breath. “Spending the holidays with the both of you really matters a lot to her. It’s all she’s been talking about for months and months! And I won’t pretend to understand what happened between you and your ex-wife, and Claudia is strong and resilient, but I think that it would mean a lot to her if she could feel like you’re all a happy family, for just a little bit. Especially with her brother not being here.”

 Viren stared at him for a moment, forehead creasing into a scowl. “You’re right. You do not understand what happened between Lissa and I.” Then he sighed, the scowl fading. “But I will think about what you said.”

 “Thank you, Sir.”

 “I’m not some noble lord, Terry. Call me Viren.”

 “Yes, sorry. Viren.” Terry corrected himself, giving the man a smile.

 Viren glanced at him for a moment, then directed his gaze to the kitchen, where Terry could see Claudia spinning about as she pulled things down from the shelves before passing them to her mother.

 “You care about my daughter very much, don’t you?” Viren said, more a statement than a question. Terry answered it anyway.

 “How could I not? Just look at her.” he sighed, smile widening. “She’s perfect.”

 “I agree.”

 Terry glanced over at him, a little surprised. He thought it might have been the first nice thing he’d said since they’d arrived at the cabin.

 Viren let out a small chuckle upon spotting his expression. “Claudia is my daughter, I realized she was wonderful long before you did, Terry.” He let out a long sigh then, expression darkening. “I have always been willing to do anything for my family. I try to push them to be the best versions of themselves they can be. The strongest and greatest. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder if, perhaps, I’ve also pushed them away.”

 “You’re talking about Soren.”

 “Yes.”

 Terry wasn’t sure what to say to that, and they both fell silent for a moment. Finally, he asked; “What did you think was the strongest and greatest version of him?”

 “I’m not sure I know anymore.” Viren admitted. “I think maybe… it was too different from who he was. Who he is.” He sighed. “He reminds me a lot of his mother.”

 “And that is… hard for you?”

 “Sometimes.”

 “Have you ever told him that?”

 Viren scoffed. “Of course not.”

 “Maybe you should.”

 Whatever moment they’d been having ended abruptly as Viren got up, tone sharpening again. “You know less about these things than you act like you do.”

 “I’m sorry.” Terry said hurriedly, not entirely sure what had changed. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”

 Slowly, Viren sank back down onto the couch. “I suppose you are a part of this family as well, now. Aren’t you, Terrestrius?”

 Terry gave him a nervous smile. “I think that’s up to you.”

 “It’s up to her.” Viren jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “And she likes you. So I will trust my daughter’s judgement. If you make her happy, then I suppose you are here to stay.”

 Terry’s smile widened. “Well, thank you.”

 “Do not thank me. I had no choice in the matter.”

 “You had a little bit of a choice.” Terry offered.

 “Then don’t make me change my mind.” Viren said, picking up his phone again and returning to tapping at it.

 “Yes, Sir. I mean, uh, Viren.”

 The man rolled his eyes, smiling almost imperceptibly, but Terry caught it.

[sir-phineas-lost]

Hey, I'm sorry to bother you, I saw you mentioning Rayla's views on violence against those she thinks deserve it and I got curious about what you meant by that since I don't think I've ever seen that take in this fandom

I mean that there is a lot of talk from a lot of characters about the need to "chose love" and not solve problems through force if you can avoid it. Rayla in particular started her character arc because she chose not to kill despite what her mission needed and then again when she found out that her mission as a whole was pointless. Most recently she is the one advocating for humanizing the ice behemoth and not treat it like a monster.

Despite this there is also a lot of violent behavior from Rayla that is never questioned and it clashes very noticeably with the rest. She tackles Viren off the Storm Spire and then obsesses over finishing the job for 2 years (this was questioned for being an obession that drove her and Callum apart, not for any qualms about seeing Viren as a human being), she chases down the magefam and takes Terry hostage in front of Claudia. She mutilates Claudia and no one even bats an eye at it.

Basically I feel like there is a lot of unexamined hypocrisy in Rayla's role as an assassin and how she views violence.

[bittrlys]

Season 4 ruined TDP for me and I haven't been able to drum up the interest to watch it since, so maybe this is an out of date take but...

Terry is kind of a pointless character. His role is sort of presented as being Claudia's last tether to her morality, but his actions are otherwise so ride-or-die it seems weird when he calls her out or gets upset about what's happening (especially since they've seemingly been together a while so he should be familiar with how Claudia operates). Plus there was already a character who could serve this role: Soren.

After season 3 I was excited to see their sibling bond evolve as their outlooks were beginning to diverge. And then with Viren resurrected I wanted to see how that affected things. I was deeply disappointed when the established familial relationships fell by the wayside in favor of a timeskip romantic one (and I usually LOVE romantic plotlines).

See, I get Soren leaving his family behind and hopping to Team Hero and thus becoming unavailable to Claudia as someone to bounce off of. I don't love the execution because I think he feels rootless and lacking in significant depth in his relationships with the main cast, but I think it works for his character. He's a prodigal young knight who swore vows to defend his king and his nation, and he's a very straightforward guy. He shares pragmatic qualities with his family, but at the same time, their pragmatism operates on an abstract level he doesn't exactly understand. Once he was forced to choose between family and what he's always known and how he's vowed to live his life, I can see him making the very hard choice to pull away from them. I think him staying as Claudia's morality pet would have been a disservice to his character, though he may have more interesting things to do just because Team Dark Magic are always doing interesting things ... but again, that's more to the execution than the conceit. I don't mind characters moving apart from people they were closest to at the start of the series, and like when they can bond with new people.

I think the limited number of episodes + breakneck pace of the plot does leave their lack of interactions more noticeable, but also more inevitable. Technically, we've seen all this: Soren and Claudia have met again and fought over their differences, and Soren and Viren got their chance to hash it out a little bit. We've been informed of the status of their relationships and their feelings for one another. For a nine episode twenty minute children's animated TV show, this is relatively decent screentime offered to their relationships considering they've been apart so long. I'm not necessarily defending it as 'good' because I'll gladly say this show has very weak screenwriting with my whole chest, but the Magefam would have to be proper protagonists and not just deuteragonists to the Main Three for the screentime to really shift in their favour. But they're not, and you can't even imagine stuff happening off screen because almost everything in the plot happens one after another barring the mid-season timeskip -- and not a whole lot of interesting things happened during that.

(Like, seriously, other than some romantic relationship statuses changing characters are basically the exact same post timeskip as they were before it. It's like ... okay!)

I hope this doesn't sound like I don't get your frustrations because I do; the Magefam are one of my favourite parts of the show and it's always better when some combination of them are on screen together. And it's like, sure Viren and Claudia were hanging out in the later seasons, but he was borderline comatose for most of that, so it doesn't feel like they were. The fracturing of a family is interesting, but you always hope for more of a resolution or at least a sense of poignancy this show is never quite going to master. I'll actually say that my feelings still hinge on season 7 or god forbid the final arc. If we see Soren and Claudia get more than one or two scenes as all our players move into place for the final confrontations -- if Soren were to learn what Viren wouldn't tell him -- if Claudia gets to have a properly satisfying confrontation with Aaravos about the death of her father if she learns the truth ... if Soren and Claudia get to mourn their father together, even if it's briefly -- if we have Claudia have complicated feelings if she were to learn about Soren asking Viren to do the spell -- of Soren offering his heart, but Viren sacrificing himself instead ... I mean, all of that could be really good, and for me it would serve as a kind of epilogue to tie together the seasons of separation and growing apart from each other.

How hopeful am I for any of this? Well, about as hopeful as I am for this show ever pleasing me. But hey! I do think it's possible, with the narrative they've already established.

Anyway, to get to the Terry of it all: I think he serves a purpose as not just Claudia's tether to morality but as someone to work off of, so I get why he's here. I also think Claudia getting a random elf boyfriend is still extremely funny and charmingly quirky of her. As I said in response to a previous ask I think Terry could use more personal development but I like his dynamic with Claudia. People call him an enabler but he does offer her some pushback, generally gently. He's just someone who loves Claudia enough to stick with her, and hey, I love Claudia too so that's nice to see. Honestly, even if Soren were around, you're obviously going to have a different relationship with a romantic partner than you would a sibling, so Terry could easily fit in the group that held Soren as well.

This season Karim (love him) was like "Janai is my sister! Of course I love her! But I'm still going to depose her violently!" and like that is great. That's siblingcore. That's I love you but I want to beat you up. That's no matter how far apart we drift you're still bound to me. Soren and Claudia are this. Meanwhile Terry and Claudia are your first serious relationship. They're young and passionate and desperate to make it work because who else would match their freak quite this way? But if they fall out there's nothing to keep them together anymore. They'll just be forced to move on. Soren can walk away from Claudia and know that on some level they are always close; if Terry walks away from Claudia he may end up meaning nothing to her. So, just like real life, there's a lot of stuff they're willing to overlook and rationalize because they WANT to keep wanting each other ... and Claudia can use someone like that on her side, as we see Soren and Viren both leave her in time.

I think Terry being down to clown but taking issues with some things is fine; he often frames his objections around the harm they will cause Claudia, and that's nice. The one thing I still don't get is his reaction to Claudia threatening the coins. I will preface this by saying I can believe he's more sensitive to elf death after he murked Ibis, and doesn't like reminders of the differences between him and Claudia when it feels very her, a human, against an elf. Yet whenever I rewatch it, I still find his censure unusually stern for him, and it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the writer's doing as they do best, that is not knowing how to write from their own established lore and character motivations.

Like, in-show it says, Claudia was cruel to mockingly threaten the lives of Rayla's loved ones, and trick her into thinking they nearly burned in agony, not offering her the real coins. Is that cruel? Sure, sure. What's the context? Oh? Rayla was THREATENING TO SLIT TERRY'S THROAT? Rayla, the Moonshadow elf ASSASSIN they have every reason to think would go through it, even if we the viewer know Rayla probably wouldn't? Hmm! If Claudia is cruel, Rayla is a monster. Rayla, who was offered the coins in fair trade as she THREATENED TO SLIT TERRY'S THROAT, but refused. Like, Terry? Are you this mad at Claudia because she did an actually extremely reasonable thing to save your life (+ her father's life) in as pacifist a way as possible, or are you mad because the writers need to tell the audience This Was Bad and ensure Rayla gets the real coins while not having to change that emotionally charged sequence they were probably really proud of writing? I still think this was Terry's characterization faltering just so they could get the outcome they wanted.

Ultimately, I see Terry as someone who is lacking in prejudice, maybe due to his own presumed desire to be taken at face value. He can date a human and not have a kneejerk reaction to dark magic, but he isn't amoral. Nothing he's really seen has been enough to push him away but he is cautious that Claudia may stop walking the knife's edge and fall off of it. He's realized even he can do terrible things out of love and this has bound him more tightly to Claudia. He's someone who is CHOOSING to join this life, and wasn't just pre-built loyal as a sibling would be. All of this does give him a role in the narrative that's pretty unique to him and their dynamic, and I like that. Again, I hope he gets more to do beyond just being Claudia's partner, but I really don't mind him existing.

Thank you very much for the ask! ♥ Really don't blame you for dropping the show post season 4 .... if I wasn't Virenpilled I would have dropped it after season 1 I think.