@starsofatlantis I’m so sorry to drag this into a reblog (and for my inability to keep my yapper shut and keep it short) but to adequately explain my reasoning here I’d have to spam Frankie’s notifications to Hell and back which I don’t wanna do. Also, I don’t want to insult your intelligence by half-assing my response to an entirely valid point so:
Your point, in a vacuum, is correct. Traditionally masculine strength isn’t the only form of strength and women are allowed to be soft. However, the important context here is a choice made while adapting a story to a different medium. This, in my opinion, changes things significantly. Because now there’s a before and after, and when analyzing the difference between these points brings us a slightly problematic observation:
The writers only deducted things from Lamina’s character, they did not add anything.
Strong women can be soft, I agree with that. Everyone can be soft. If you gave me a female character who is soft, there would be no world in which I would criticize that decision. The problem here is that Lamina was soft in the books too. She cried a lot, she was clearly upset in an upsetting situation but still managed to handle it with surprising mental and physical strength. She created a strategy, she managed to injure two people in a three on one fight and could have won if Mizzen or Coral tripped for even just a second. Heck, if Tanner missed his throw by an inch Lamina might have taken them all out. In the movie she’s scrambling backwards and loses a lot of that prowess to the point where she doesn’t hold the upper hand in that fight at any point. In the book, she nearly decapitated Coral which would have likely lead to victory over at least two thirds of the pack. In the movie, she swings a few times but doesn’t even hit Mizzen. Not to mention she loses the strategic aspect of carefully picking her weapon before killing Marcus.
All traditionally feminine traits she had in the book (the empathy required to mercy kill Marcus and her trading with Marcus, though that’s only shown in deleted scenes of the movie) remain, but all her more masculine traits (strength and battle prowess) were stripped. Also, her strategic thinking (prioritizing getting the right weapon and getting on the beams at all) is also taken away. When she climbs the beams in the movie she only has eyes for Marcus, implying the strategic aspect was a happy accident while mercy killing was the main objective. There wouldn’t be a problem there if they’d added the scene where Lamina trades with Reaper, as there was clear strategy there too, but instead we’re left with nothing.
And what did they add? One scene where Lamina looks upset that Treech made the rational decision of choosing the pack over her. Objectively, that was the smart thing to do for him. Her upset over that means she put friendship over survival in a death game, and if she’d kept all the other more survivalist aspects of her character I wouldn’t mind that, but because they stripped all of those aspects for her it feels like just another way to turn her into the Emotional Wreck. It doesn’t help that Teslee’s only big moment in the movie was her being dragged to her spot while crying. All of her smarts and willingness to get dirty for survival were stripped too because she died in the bloodbath. Lucy Gray was also stripped of agency, because in the books the rat poison was her idea and she poisoned Wovey with it. She also killed Treech with a snake. In the movie, she’s given the rat poison by Snow and the snakes do all the work for her so the smart idea to keep one safe from the cold in her pocket and sliding it down Treech’s shirt is gone. It’s a pattern in the movies that only happens to the girls. All characters lose depth, but with the girls it happens in a way I can only see as a pattern.
As for Lamina leaving the book being a headcanon: is it confirmed? No. But Lamina made a whole strategy that involves only her and made it happen on her own. At no point do we get any mention that she’s looking around waiting for someone. What does that imply? She wasn’t expecting anyone, because no one else was involved in her strategy. Treech stays off the radar, I doubt he’d go out of his way to piss someone off and paint a target on his back.
Lastly, I’m so sorry if this comes across as nitpicky or something but I’ve seen assholes on the internet go absolutely, stupidly bonkers over stuff like this. I wanna caution against your use of the slippery slope because it’s a logical fallacy whose fallaciousness relies entirely on the elaboration, which you cannot give in such a short reply. As it stands now, all I have to say is that the problem only comes in if we go too far down the slope, so if I stay where I am there is nothing wrong. I won’t, because I understand where you’re coming from, hence my idiotically long response (I am so sorry, brevity may be the soul of wit but I can only seem to channel it for a university paper’s word limit), but a more dishonest person could do so and you’d essentially be trapped. If you keep arguing, you are the dishonest one because you’re changing your argument. If you don’t, you’re dishonest because you made a “bad” argument. I’ve seen this happen and I’ve seen some more toxic fandoms absolutely dogpile people over this nonsense, so I guess I’m scarred from that but please try to avoid using this reasoning when you have a word limit. I don’t want to see anyone go through the shit I’ve seen fandoms fling at each other over the years.
I hope that was comprehensive? If it wasn’t, I am entirely open to being proven wrong so please tell me what you think!
