im so happy that hardshine doesn’t get together in the end because i think it’s absolutely the right choice for them and it gives their relationship so much nuance and it’s also so true to the characters and god emily and jake did such an AMAZING job with creating their relationship and dynamic and not just giving in at the end to what “looks right” but staying true to their characters.
also as murph said in a short rest, these characters are not living normal timelines and they still have so much time off-screen to explore that relationship. i remember he said normal people might get together in their 20s, 30s but as these characters live hundreds of years why would they come together so soon?
i totally felt while listening to the podcast that neither of them is ready yet to be together in a romantic way… and maybe they never will. specially moonshine being such an independent character, and i think she’s portrayed pretty much as non-monogamous and i think even if she loves hardwon deeply she doesn’t want to just comply to the norm and have a normative romantic relationship with him. also hardwon feels during the last two episodes as if he’s still not confident enough to confess to moonshine and he still believes that she doesn’t like him (even tho emily said on the short rest that moonshine has more than platonic feelings for hardwon, moonshine never said that actually) so he wouldn’t confess on the finale of course.
but they had the sweetest moment with hardwon saying he wanted to move to the crick… omg my heart is so warm!!!
also hardwon started the campaign with an exgf that he hadn’t move on from yet and then she was killed in front of him and it was such a big deal for half of the campaign… it makes sense for him to have some time to explore other affective relationships than to jump again into being with “the one”
and of course all the nuance of the relationship, reads so queerplatonic to me but can read as so many things and it’s fantastic and such a good work from emily and jake.
one of the reasons i was a bit reluctant on hardshine is because between the kiss in the feywild and the resurrection i feel like hardwon is so fucking devoted to moonshine and his feelings are so obvious, but a bit afterwards he starts being affectionate to her in a different way and calling her sister and things like that i started to doubt if hardwon actually had romantic feelings or not. but then at the end he makes it very clear with his conversation with jaina that his feelings are romantic. but with moonshine it’s never cleared up, it’s just obvious that she cares and loves him deeply and i’m so glad that emily never put a name to those feelings and clarified if they’re romantic or not.
anyways i’m now obsessed with hardshine and im super new to this fandom so PLEASE fellow naddpod fans and hardshine enjoyers send me your favs fics, headcanons… let’s talk about them please
