thoughts on newtmas :) go on :) i’m listening :)

sami rly said ok time for violence. this is going to be so long sorry everyone.

if we’re talking newtmas itself as a ship in itself, outside of any other influence (and specifically in the movie version, which is generally what people are talking about), I think it’s a good ship. I would have to be the most unobservant motherfucker alive to not see what people see in it, and I am not, in fact, the most unobservant motherfucker alive. it’s a good dynamic with good chemistry and realistically I think if I’d started with the movies rather than the books, I would’ve gone all in for it.

however. I personally am incapable about talking about it in isolation.

I realize from that segue it sounds like I’m about to lead into some grand moral point, but mostly I just liked how dramatic it sounded. anyway. I feel like I need to start with a disclaimer that the easiest, simplest part of this is that you tend to get attached to your first ships in a fandom, as well as your initial feelings about the characters. obviously you can change your mind about any of those things, but it does stick with you. if we’re going to be kind and skip my internalized homophobia era (please be kind), I shipped thominho and nalby because that’s what was big at the time. I also just... did not like book thomas very much, so I wasn’t about to ship him with my favorite character.

(complete and utter tangent: it’s interesting to me that people read the books now and overwhelmingly see newtmas. I recognize that every time I start a sentence with “it’s interesting that” it automatically sounds shady, but i genuinely just love Analyzing. anyway some of it’s definitely people seeing the movie first or having fandom content as a first exposure even in passing, all of which are valid ways to engage, but I do kind of find it fascinating when people talk about book!newtmas as some massive presence because then... theoretically we all should’ve seen it pre-movies? the ship existed, usually among people who hardcore multishipped, but it wasn’t anything like it is today. not at all to say that reading it like that is invalid, it’s just interesting to me the way some people talk about that interpretation, rather than the interpretation itself)

anyway. with that all out of the way, i do have some actual issues with newtmas, although it really doesn’t have anything to do with the characters or the ship itself. these are things that surround the ship and affect my feelings about it, meaning that I never bought in despite, like I said, Seeing It. my main issue with it is how much the roles of other characters have been reduced to create the ship in its current form. I’ve talked at far too much length about the way minho was adapted and honestly will probably talk about it more, because that’s the big one to me (that post can be found here, for those who don’t keep up with every rant I’ve ever gone on for some reason). I will not go so far as to say that’s required reading to fully understand this post, but I would recommend it since I don’t want to just repeat myself. so much of newtmas being the major ship feels like it’s predicated on minho not being there and not having anywhere near as strong a relationship with thomas and newt as he did in the books, and that will never sit right with me.

newt’s relationship with alby is his other most significant dynamic outside thomas and minho, and i feel like it might be surprising to hear me say this, but i get why that one was reduced for the movie. there’s only so much time in the film, so you want to focus on the characters who are going to make it past the first one. I do have a problem here, but it has more to do with dashner and with some fandom bullshit. with dashner, i think the crank palace is the worst of it (I could’ve just stopped that sentence at “I think the crank palace is the worst” but whatever). since all my rants lead back to each other, I’ll link the relevant one here, but the general gist is that my biggest problem was that newt does not seem to have any more of a post-swipe past than thomas does despite theoretically having two more years of memories. given that fact, I don’t know about you, but I would kind of expect alby to be more of a presence in his consciousness. that’s true of pretty much any of the original gladers, but newt and alby are clearly very close in the first book, and again, alby saved his fucking life. he’s literally mentioned once. dashner prioritized the newt/thomas dynamic so much that newt seemingly had no meaningful relationships with anyone else. tcp isn’t immune to treating minho badly either; like I said in that post, it sounds like newt read the wikipedia page on minho. is any of this the fault of the ship itself? does this change anything that came before it? no, but the whole thing feels massively disingenuous, and also kind of disrespectful to people who actually, like, gave a shit about the other characters. also, the way he’s retconning makes me real nervous.

the other part, like I mentioned, is the fandom more than any of the actual content. I’m aware that part of this is just a statistics game and also that’s it’s not representative of all newtmas shippers, but most of the alby bashing I’ve seen comes from newtmas people. it’s... baffling to me, honestly. what’s the point in putting down a ship being kept alive by me and like 3 other people? what do you gain by misrepresenting a character to the point of maliciousness when you could easily just not engage with them? again, I know it’s not everyone and it doesn’t have anything to do with the ship, but I’d be lying if I said things like this don’t color my perception. if someone goes out of their way to put down a ship I like, I’m not really gonna want to associate myself with their ship. I’m gonna cling to my own harder out of spite, actually.

also.... okay. so I peaced out to go do other shit between earlyish 2015 and mid 2019. and it was very weird to temporarily leave the fandom while the two main (in my recollection at least, which could be biased by who i was friends with) mlm ships each included one of the explicitly non-white characters, and come back to find it almost entirely dominated by white boy/white boy... like. I don’t wanna make a statement as simple as “the fandom is racist” because a) it’s not my place to say that, b) if we want to go into that, there are other examples of fandom racism where it’s Blatant and there really is no excuse, whereas this is a bit more complicated imo because c) like. that’s the dynamic the movies gave us. the movies focused very heavily on the newt and thomas dynamic, so of course that’s what the fandom is going to focus on. there’s a lot to say there, but that’s a different issue. it does.... still contribute to the bad taste in my mouth, though, and also contributes to me feeling like I need to keep those ships alive. it’s not about who has the Most Progressive Ship, I just feel weird about the particular shift I’ve seen here.

on a note that sounds less like I’m leveling accusations, New Relationships just aren’t my vibe. you look at my ao3 and it’s like. friends of many years to lovers. established relationship. friends to lovers to exes and back again. just from a dynamics perspective, there are other ships that are more interesting for me to explore. there. this is a lighter reason.

idk overall I don’t wanna sound like I’m on some Moral Crusade here, even though i know some of my points made it sound like that. this is really just me putting all of my thoughts that I can currently round up in one place in order to... idk, explain myself? and like it’s stupid that i feel the need to explain myself, but I know it’s weird not to ship it at this point, and I know if I did I would have so much more content to choose from and a much wider audience for my own content. there’s just baggage there thats entirely separate from the ship itself, having seen the shift and knowing what had to change in order to center newtmas. I’m not trying to sound like I’m better than anyone; I just think maybe I have a different perspective on things having been here for long enough to qualify it as a new mental illness, and that’s ultimately why I feel the way I do.

I JUST HAD A STROKE you know those mind blowing shower thoughts yeah like one of those its cutrently 00:20am i have to be awake in like 6 hours or something SO i cpulsnt care less about spelling and typos and grammar i just hope it doesnt suck too much but I REALIZEF A THING I REALLY HAD TO SHARE which is why the sami/kevin situation doesnt make me as uncomfortable as the seth/dean(and roman) situation did (by now im just over it but still bitter) i know people have given u shit aboug //pt1

ABOUT you liking zowens but hating ambr*llins and i have to admit i was a bit congused by that too cause trust is just something i dony take lightly and both kevin and seth just FUCLED UP ((to quote paramore I PUT MY FAITH IN U SO MUCH FAITH AND THEN U JUST THREW IT AWAY)) BUT at leadt as of RIGHT NOW (yea cause i dont fcking trust either kevin or seth lmao theyll fuck up again) the MAIN DIFFERENCE HERE is that //pt2

SAMI CHOSE TO FORGIVE KEVIN ALL BY HIMSELF LIKE HE WASNT PUSHED INTO THAT LIKE DEAN CAUSE LETS BE HONEST EVERYBODY SETH JUST SNEAKED HIS WAY INTO DEANS MIND MAKING HIM FEEL LIKE HE WAS IN THE WRONG FOR STILL BEING MAD and lets just not talk about roman ok like not even an apologize WHAT THE FUCK WWE that silent nodding bullshit IS NOT ENOUGH BUt anyway bby sami just decided that it was time to get over it and forgive kevin and it was all his decision //pt3

nobody pushing him nobody makin him do that just him realizing he was ready and going for it while we all know what happened with dean so i can just sit through kwvin and sami hugging even though im never shipping it never even like being chill about them being close but it doesnt make me uncomfortable AND HERES THE REASON while even now that shield is all back together watching them interact is almost cringy i just jhjskckskka im mind blown this may be obvious but IM SHOOK sorry k ill go to bed //pt4  

((i apologize for that mess ITS JUST that i can see why people are confused as im one of them but ive been enlightened and i wanna EXPLAIN and IDK I JST FEEL LIKE I GOT TO A CONCLUSION ALL BY MYSELF LIKE YAY GO ME GOOD JOB NAI YOURE ALSO SMART)) //pt5

it just was really weird bc like i watched the sami/kevin segment i saw pics & gifs and i thought “pure” i saw shippers being hyped and i yhought “understandable havr a nice day” then i saw shield WHATEVER and i was “no thnks” and i wached segments and i was “meh at leadt i got ambreigns” and i saw shippers that ship seth with them and i was like “wtf(!) how do yall do it” like HOW DO THEY FORGET ABOUT CHAIRS AND BACK SO EASILY LIKE IM STILL HUNG UP ON THAG HOW DO THEY BRUSH IT OF LIKE THIS TF //pt6

i should stop yea //pt7

Nagi, my dear!! I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but I’m currently studying German for an oncoming test, which is quite a painful experience lmao

I’m, like, so glad you had this realization suddenly?? Because sometimes when I try to explain myself I feel like I can’t find the right words and, GIRL, YOU DID.It’s totally okay if you don’t ship Zowens, but it’s super important that you (as I hope others will do) understood on your own why I wouldn’t consider their relationship abusive and why I hate comparisons between them and Ambr*llins. Or Ambr*lleigns for that matter.

Sami CHOSE to forgive Kevin on his own, when he was ready to do so. Kevin being a man that never downplayed what he did. Kevin being a man that never tried to worm his way back into Sami’s head.We know how things went with Dean and Seth instead… and it still creeps me out to this day. There was some major gaslighting and self-entitlement going on. And as you said, no apology for Roman either??? That’s BULLSHIT. Roman got hit first by the damn chair but heyyyyy let’s pretend that never happened, right? Who cares about the Big Dog’s feeling?

Sami CHOSE to join the dark side and go back to the man he’s known (and loved) all his life. People gotta admit that he’s never looked so happy as he does now. Sami visibly found empowerment in this process of forgiveness, and Kevin is doing anything in his power to prove himself worthy of having Sami by his side again.Meanwhile, we have Seth being like “and then one day… that all went away”. Bitch, are you FOR REAL??? Don’t be a brat, own up to what you did. You bragged non-stop about tearing the Shield apart when you were HHH’s protégé, and you suddenly have amnesia now?

Ambr*llins is abusive because Seth forced Dean into forgiving him (while using manipulation, shouting and gaslighting), and still doesn’t understand the depth of the wound he inflicted on his brothers.Zowens is not abusive, because none of that happened in Kevin and Sami’s reconciliation. Believe it or not, Kevin seems to have a better moral compass than Seth when it comes to this.

Also at this point I’m not coming at anyone for what they ship.I’m just stating my thoughts on the matter so people won’t call me an hypocrite from their high horse ✌️