User blog:Corbierr/Romances, and how the writers ruined them (and how they could have been done well)

I know it’s late, but here it is- my romance rant!

So we’ve already covered the fact that plots assassinate character development, and the writers fail at writing friendships that are more important than the others. How did they mess up the romances? Let me break it down into three reasons.



1) Happening too fast
Now, I don't exactly mean Mabian-type fast, although they may have run into this problem if the story continued on. No, I mean the type of fast that relationships like Fabina and Peddie fell into- rushing into a relationship before they were really prepared to date.

Let's use Peddie for this example.

We all know how they got together. After their excellent, love-hate build up, Patricia kissed him and Bam! They began to date. Okay, now, the problem lies right there. Patricia kissed him about halfway through the season, more or less, and from then on their plot became less about love-hate fun, but more about the two of them struggling to date like normal people.

Of course, at the time, it seemed fine- and let's be honest, most of us were thrilled that Peddie was now dating. However, when one looks deeper, you begin to realize- they weren't ready to date. They were barely at the point where they admitted they were actually friends, and they expected to be ready to date after one kiss? After all that love-hate stuff? No way. That doesn't work, not in real life and not in fiction. At the very least, they should have waited just a bit longer- long enough to drop their love/hate act and start getting to know each-other as actual friends and not frenemies. Not that I'm saying Peddie is a bad pairing; I ship it. But they just weren't prepared to date, and that explains all their problems that came after their kiss. Their trust issues? Their break up? Their communication struggles? All because of this.

But that begs the question. Is there a way they could have done this well?

Yes, had they done it so that they managed to get past their struggles and grow up past the stage where they didn't really know each-other. To the point where they were actually, completely, totally prepared to date each-other. In other words- what Fabina did. Because Fabina had this same problem, and broke up because of it- but then they got over this and got together because they were ready to date.

Of course, Fabina had their own big problem....

2) Miscommunication
Yeah, I think we all know plenty of examples where couples were just flat out awful at talking to each-other. I don't think I need to explain how this is a problem.

Let's use Fabina as an example. They just struggled with telling each-other things they needed to know. Not that they never spoke to each-other... but it was often about the mystery... in fact, it was, like, always about the mystery. They liked to talk about finding clues or the mask or senkhara, and all the other times it was about how things were ruined and Joy was in the way. Imagine how easy it would have been to fix things if they had just spoke up.

Now, I know that them speaking up would have lessened the drama, that is true. All that I'm trying to say, is, whenever they had the chance to just tell the other how they felt, they blew it, and then let their problems blow up into big, big issues. But the writers acted like all of their issues were Joy's fault, when in reality, a lot of what happened was caused by their own inability to talk to each-other.

Also, I have to admit that there were other problems, like lack of trust and moving too fast and they certainly weren't the first pairing to have this issue- but in their situation, it was pretty obvious, because unlike Peddie, they didn't struggle with not really knowing each-other too well, and unlike, say, Mickra, it wasn't really an issue of one party loving more than two people and being conflicted. They both had strong feelings only for each-other, and for Anubis's sake, they were best friends! There should have been no problems with not being able to communicate! At the very least, they should have been able to talk about their relationship in more ways than just making vague romantic statements and getting upset whenever things failed.

How might this have been done well? If they had portrayed one of the characters honestly just having big trouble with telling the other the truth- this would have certainly been Fabian's position- and have them overcome it later, then it would have been fine. But the writers didn't even seem to realize that they were making it  big problem, or they just wanted drama and wanted an easy way to keep them apart until the end because it's not like anything interesting can come from Fabina dating for more than a week, amirite?

Now, it's time for the last issue that plagues romances-

3) THE PLOT.
Indeed. I've already complained about the plot ruining characters and causing Mabian to be worse than it could have been, but I really do need to just bring it up again.

The plot is why these pairings were destined to fail at some point, because drama is more important than development. As in, they seemed to only get ruined, no matter how stable they were at one point, because the writers wanted them to and they had to make up some contrived B.S. to make it work.

This, if you haven't figured it out, is what happened to Jara.

Now, I think we all know what I'm saying. Jara, at one point, had the most promise to be a very stable, mutual respective relationship, and that's just stupid, so they had to get ruined by Jerome suddenly becoming a cheater. If that didn't happen, they wouldn't have failed. Yes, it was realistic for Jerome not to be completely changed, because that would have taken more than two years, and it was realistic for that to cause a small riff. But what wasn't realistic is Jerome needing to re-learn that lesson with Joy and Mara doing what she did without remorse. She did similar things to Mick, but at least she had felt guilty about those things!

What I'm trying to say is, Jara was once the healthiest relationship on the show. There was very little chance beforehand that any of this were to happen, if not for the writers suddenly deciding that Jeroy should date.

How could this have been done better?

.... Not sure it could have been, because the only way it would have been good was if they made the plot be based on what the characters wanted, not the other way around. Honestly, I can't think of a way for a plot-ruined-relationship to have been made good if they had the same issue. Basically, plot before character ruins everything.

4) What about the relationships that worked?
On the other hand, not all the relationships were harmed by these kinds of problems. What relationships were these? Any one that involved Alfie.

I'm not joking.

Really. Amfie, Walfie, Pifie, they were all well written romances. What made them work?

They weren't held back by any of the issues mentioned above. In Amfie's case, they had their share of drama, but you know what happened? They learned from it. They were able to move on from their mistakes and actually grow into a stable relationship. Walfie didn't even have issues, outside of the whole Sinner Alfie problem, and that was fixed fast- it was just a simple, cute, passionate relationship with trust and love. Pifie? We didn't see them for too long, but they were like Walfie- very few problems, and despite their short time frame, they had nice development.

Basically, any romance can be done well if the characters in them are allowed to grow up and get over their problems, and if the characters are honestly compatible, because that's important too. It's all about development, and as long as they can pull that off, there is nothing they can't do.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

