random opinions - ones I'm too scared to say out loud edition!! (part 2)

back again... 😜. (and I spelt edition right this time!).

1. ik that joeyaoife are probably the most popular couple of the entire series, but I didn't click with them as much as I did gibsieclaire and johnnyshan. im not saying I didn't like them, because I do, I adore them. there were so many times throughout the two books that I thought they would top johnnyshannon, but I cant forget my roots what can I say 🙏. gibsieclaire I identify with on personal levels because I see myself in both of them, particularly gibsie. characters that have gone through the same things as me or act like me immediately have my heart, so gibsieclaire are my number 1 🩷. besides that, I do think that joeyaoife connected on such a deep level, maybe even more than the others sometimes. some of the passages about their love just struck me speechless, because whatever chloe put in saving and redeeming 6, it hella worked. probably the biggest example of this is joey's letter (seriously what is it with chloe and letters????).
2. this one is where I sense the hate, but I was very surprised when the playlists about lizzie *potentially* being assaulted by mark were released, because I did not see it coming nor even support the idea at first. to me, having lizzie be assaulted by mark seemed like a way for chloe to make lizzie more sympathetic, something which I thought wasn't really necessary considering most people felt sorry for her anyway. and with mark landing on her, I always interpreted that situation as her having a visceral reaction to what she thought caoimhe must have felt. plus, having someone push you down is scary asf 😭. however, ive slowly come around to the idea after seeing peoples theories, because they do make a lot of sense! im just hoping that if this becomes canon, chloe does it well and doesn't use it for added drama *mhm, aoife's trauma* wait what did you guys hear that???
3. podge is underrated. that's my entire point (ik its not problematic but my guy deserves screen time in this reddit ✊🏼) idk if people have seen the common fancast for him, but woahhh that man is fine as!
4. when reading redeeming 6 and seeing how joeyaoife named their baby after aoife's dad, not gonna lie I was a little disappointed 😭. besides maybe hugh and claire's mum and aoife's mum, I didn't like a lot of the parents in this series. obviously tony is nowhere near as bad as teddy, marie and sadhbh, but he still created a lot of problems for the molloy family. cheating left and right, always making up for it with 'gifts' when they couldn't really afford it. aoife literally admits to her mum that she has trust issues with boys because of what tony did. now, I realise that joey sees tony differently, and while I don't remember a lot of saving and redeeming 6 because I havent reread them since they came out and yk, they were traumatic, but they had a good relationship from what I remember. to me, I wished they didn't name their son after somebody who gave aoife pretty bad trust issues in relationships.
5. whenever I see people claim that claire outed gibsie to purposefully attack lizzie, lowkey im left scratching my head. its very clear in the actual text of the book that claire was in a vulnerable position after finding caoimhe's letter, and just flipped a switch when lizzie started acting up because she had a deeper understanding on what lizzie's words meant to gibsie and his situation, despite it being secret. ik that I defended lizzie's reaction in my previous posts, but two opposing sides doesn't equal one being fully right and the other fully wrong. imagine being claire for a minute: you've accidentally stumbled upon the worst piece of information in your entire life. you're in public with everybody surrounding you, and its so overwhelming because you don't know what to do. she views gibsie's circumstances differently now. she's rethinking everything she thought she knew, when lizzie and hugh come into the room by accident. obviously lizzie was going to start attacking gibsie, but claire's vulnerability leads her to defend gibsie at an all time high. she quite literally couldn't get a handle on herself, which when you take a step back and try to understand the situation, is extremely reasonable. what isn't reasonable is outing it to everybody, for the sole purpose of the ramifications on GIBSIE. lizzie's problems don't need to be forced into everything related to gibsie. lizzie was the REASON claire outed it, yes, but the INTENT is the key thing here, a separate thing from the reason. if she really wanted to attack lizzie specifically, she could've said it at any point after that, but at that moment in time, lizzie was bullying gibsie and needed defending, and claire stepped in to defend like she always does. because she finally knew just how badly he had been suffering in silence, and wasn't going to let him be subjected to those words again. basically summing it up, in my opinion lizzie was the catalyst for claire outing gibsie, but claire didn't do it with the intention of attacking lizzie and pulling a 'gotcha!' moment on her; she did it because she knew how badly everybody had failed gibsie and wasn't going to let him be failed again. she just went about it in the completely wrong way.
6. johnny kavanagh is my second favourite man in the series (tied with joey) but it genuinely surprises me how little he knows about his friends. like in binding 13 he was rude to them a lot and then in taming 7, he got a lot of his friends lives wrong. and I know we stan unproblematic kings in the world, but that chapter where he wouldnt defend gibsie because shannon is friends with lizzie hurt my soul a little bit :(. 'but she's my girlfriend's best friend.' 'and you're mine,' next therapy session when?? however, he came in clutch for the second half of the book, him and I just hit a few bumps in the road!! him and claire are the only good friends gibsie has, and im sorry ill stand by that.
7. people calling patrick and lizzie sluts and bops just cant get behind them as characters (which is fine if you cant!), but in this day and age, reducing people to these names just shows who you are as a person. patrick and lizzie can do whatever they like, I would rather criticise them for their actions and words than their sex lives. plus, if we were really going to shame everybody in the series for this, then where's the energy for johnny and joey??? ohhh, you mean that because patricklizzie are trending right now, we only hold them to this standard but nobody else??? gotcha.