I'm curious : what are ur thoughts on evershadow??
Short version: Best toxic ship ever. I'm serious. The way I see it, there are ships where everything's (mostly) nice and healthy and the whole thing is very sweet (e.g. Eric/Thunden); there are ships that are frankly rather weird but the more you think about it the more it grows on you and you definitely wouldn't say no if the canon actually went there (e.g. Ghoul/Grot - no? Just me? Okay...). And then there are ships where you almost actively feel bad for shipping it because it's just...so unbelievably unhealthy on pretty much every level. That's where EverShadow sits for me.
Elsewhere spoilers under the cut because I have spent way too long thinking about their relationship. (This is the long version, btw - and when I say "long", I mean it).
So, even right from the start it's very clearly an unhealthy dynamic. Not having been at the Session 0 and not having a Patreon level that means I can access cast interviews and stuff, I have no idea if Shadow addressing Everly as "my love" in Ep 1 of Elsewhere was a genuine mistake on Chris' part that he and Adam just rolled with (pun fully intended), or if Shadow was always planned to be pining for Everly, but either way, their relationship right from the start is defined by him trying his best to impress her and her responding by just...putting him down. And it only gets increasingly worse from her making him fetch her berries and then not eating them once he has.
And it's worth pointing out that the unhealthiness definitely isn't all from Everly's side, especially at the beginning. In fact, the dynamic doesn't really become muddied in that regard really until Ep 8. From Eps 1-7, the relationship between them is pretty solidly defined by Shadow being...well, let's face it, borderline obsessed with Everly and Everly not only not being interested in Shadow but being actively annoyed by him - which, let's face it, is somewhat understandable for someone who has been put in that position. What's more inexcusable is her active cruelty towards him, especially once they pick up Quarrel (who...honestly, I could and have spend hours dissecting as a character because his progression is truly fascinating). Speaking purely for myself, I spent the first few episodes genuinely disliking Shadow for how hard he was trying with Everly while she was making it inescapably clear that she just WAS NOT INTERESTED - and I don't mean that as any kind of slight against Chris Leask at all; paradoxically Shadow became my favourite character very early on in Ep 2; I just happened to dislike that one aspect of the character, although some of those interactions were admittedly very funny. The turning point for me came at the end of Ep 6 when Everly encouraged Shadow to turn himself in and made the explicit hope that he would die as a result which even by that point was still...a tad extreme, let's say.
Everly really starts taking the reins in terms of driving the unhealthy nature of the relationship from Ep 8 onwards and I like that the shift in the dynamic coincides with Shadow's drive to better himself and Everly's just...everything getting increasingly worse with each passing episode. Speaking entirely personally, I do feel like Everly probably had some feelings for Shadow - not enough for an actual relationship between them to ever be able to thrive and I like that the culmination came with the objectively awesome first kiss on the back of a dragon underwater, but I don't think that internally she was as disgusted by him as she seemed externally - like...Adam played her as genuinely perturbed each time Shadow stopped showing an interest.
The other thing regarding the relationship that I think is worth highlighting (because I think it's something we're all aware of subconsciously even if it's not brought up much) is just how well and seamlessly it transitioned throughout the course of the 20 episodes from something pathetically and hopelessly one-sided that's pretty exclusively played for laughs, to something that seems weirdly plausible, to something that is actually and repeatedly acknowledged to be incredibly unhealthy and frankly almost disturbing by the end. Because while we can all agree that Shadow (and Chris probably) genuinely wants Everly dead in the aftermath of her murdering Parvel and on some level he's just biding his time and trying to lull her into a false sense of security until he can get revenge (because obviously Chris couldn't just kill Adam's PC and the driving force of the narrative before the climax of the final episode), the possibility that despite all of that he may also genuinely still have feelings for her is also there, and I kind of love that it reaches a point in the aftermath of Parvel's murder that that possibility very audibly becomes as uncomfortable for everyone that was actually in the room playing as it is for us just listening to it. If I have one criticism of the HoHR franchise, as it were, it's that very occasionally, you can kind of feel a particular vibe or moment being telegraphed in advance to a degree that it lessens the emotional impact when it hits. For me, the biggest example of this is in the Henley flashback episode with Jakom (or however you spell it). Like...I'd honestly be very surprised if there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that that little boy (who is explicitly there to act as a parallel to Gregothy in the episode that showed what Henley did to make Sylvie want to commission his murder) was going to turn out to be living happy ever after by the end of it. So when he inevitably died...yes, it was sad but it wasn't as heart-breaking as it possibly could have been. Another example was when Thunden was listed among the potential suiters for Lady Subzero Susan; like...on some level, of course Thunden was going to end up being the one betrothed to her by the end of that. Fortunately this doesn't happen nearly enough to be a genuine problem with the franchise - and the moments where it does happen are kind of bound to happen by the narrative. Whereas pretty much everything about Everly and Shadow's interactions from the moment Everly kills Parvel feel both in-character for both of them and spontaneous (whether they were or not, because obviously unless we're in the room we can't really tell). And I love that the sheer toxicity of the ship reaches the point where Chris and Adam seem to just...not even want to try and play it for anything other than drama in those last two episodes.
I'll be honest, as a fan of toxic ships in general, far far too often we see those ships either downplay the toxicity or else play the dynamic for laughs. I love the fact that here, Shadow has a breaking point; maybe he does still have feelings for Everly by the end of the final episode, but he can't move past the fact that she killed Parvel - the only member of the group to fully reciprocate his care and devotion without pretence or expectation - and what makes that act unforgivable beyond just the deed itself is that it wasn't done for any real sense of the "greater good" as Quarrel tries to rationalise it in the final episode, but out of pure spite that Shadow displayed loyalty to something other than her. And the fact that their final interaction of the campaign has Everly on one hand take pity on Shadow and cure Agnes...while also on the other hand framing that act of kindness as Shadow needing her forgiveness for attempting to betray her...which he only did because of her own actions... *chef's kiss*
