ian

this is a difficult question for me to answer, not because i don’t have very strong opinions— believe me, i do— but because i have a 1.5k draft about basically this exact thing, so i’m keeping this brief, especially since the others will probably give longer answers. i highly dislike both.

when people say they like rek, it’s not meant in the same way as for other lifestealers, and the vast majority of his fans neither critically think about him nor critically consume his content. this means that people don’t actually understand his character or even have a character to “give him”. in an attempt at having a character that’s more than just a blank slate, everybody then either 1. latches onto the first misconception of a “character trait” they can push onto him, which in his case is his “paranoia”— i talk about this more here; 2. takes the surface-level view of him as a person as nothing more than always nice, wholesome, and innocent, and conflates it with the character of him on lifesteal (because rek does have a character on lifesteal, regardless of its intentionality); or 3. both.

if i'm being completely honest, then the short answer is that it annoys me.

the long answer is that i think a vast majority of the fandom is still stuck characterizing a version of how he was in s3, and by "a version" i mean people have projected what they expect rek to act like in the situations he finds himself in, which just turns him into some kind of scared, cowering animal who doesn't know how to handle the shenanigans that happen on lifesteal, despite the fact that he has never acted that way. people make him out to be "innocent" and "pure", someone who can only act as the straight-man (and i don't mean straight as in het just to be clear, because i know someone's gonna be thinking that), someone oh-so-pitiful who needs to be saved, and overall just... woobifies him, to be frank.

i think when people think of rekrap2, they only think of s3 diamond duo. they don't think of the dirties, or chaos faction, or decimation. they don't think about his approach to pvp in early s6, they don't think about n&a, they don't think about how he's ended every season since s3, they don't think about his contributions to apocalypse, they don't think about the way he acts with those who are in his team vs those who are not, they don't think about the way he carries himself, they don't think about what his moral compass actually looks like with the evidence on hand.

and i understand i may be coming across a bit harsh (and i am, because at the end of the day it's all for fun or whatever, people aren't gonna share the same characterizations blah blah blah, i get it), but i have seen so, so, so few fanworks that are actually about him compared to the ones that just have him "around," and the ones that are almost always draw from the exact same moments in a season that's about four years old at this point, reiterating the same characterizations that make me want to rip my hair out because they just aren't him and never have been. the amount of fics i've read that actually made me think "that's rekrap" doesn't even break two digits, and i've combed through literally his entire tag. rek, in the vast majority of fics i've read of him, simply just exists to react rather than take action.

posting one of my fav clips from this vod (starting from 1:39:06), full transcript under the cut

my favourite (two) paragraph(s) from my naa rek study.