KLN

Me too. I love JLB but I'd recast. There's a plethora of actresses in her age range who could pull off the rigidity of Laura with believable romantic appeal opposite Northrup.

That's why I loved @Khan's idea for a Kate/Roman/Laura triangle. Regular guy Roman, ice queen Kate and uptight Marlena-adjacent Laura. Josh Taylor needs to go. Gift him a few seasons of golf and throw an extra $100 in the Christmas card. They need Northrup back so he can get the change Roman was shorted.

You're always on the nose. JER was a weird dude with a skewed perspective to say the least.

You're not wrong about that either. Good Kristen was a bore. Poorly conceived and kind of severe with male leads. Her dark turn happened at a personally important time in my life and I gravitated to her. It's been hard marrying the extremes of the character and find stable footing, I know. But I actually think that lends itself to reimagining the character when you factor in her childhood background and whatnot. She could be a tragic anti-heroine if they wrote her as one. Or she can be a Darth Maul daughter from hell and fall into a woodchipper next week. I won't lose sleep either way but I DO see value in her, personally. Primarily as a rotated character though. You don't seem to like any iteration of the character that's ever existed so there's pretty much nothing in this mess for you lol. Agree, it mostly worked for what it was. 😆😆😆 I don't see eye to eye with you on everything but I love your posts!

I assume dirty money from the family henchmen cracking heads on the murder for hire circuit. 😄😄

That's how I feel too. Kristen was sort of the next evolution of obstacles in the saga of John and Marlena's love story. Half a box of fries short and a tortured bitch in the end but she continues to pay dividends as a character.

😄😄😄 I can't argue with any of your points except to say my perspective is (obviously) skewed a bit. Everything that's ever happened on this show since November 1965 has been a mess from one perspective or another.

She seemed like a lot as a character. 😄😄 I love Patsy but she has a lot of... energy.

For me it was love in general. I grew up in a broken home, sexually abused, separated from my mom at a young age, told she abandoned me and didn't love me, etc. Closeted gay kid in the 90's. It could've been a lot worse but I didn't know the trauma I was in when I was in it. I've more or less healed all that through experience, growing up, learning to trust, forgive and allow vulnerability but I poured myself into soaps to escape reality and I identified with the angry wound that was Kristen DiMera in my teens for sure. She's a tragic mess of a character but I like her personally and think she has story value. Very interesting. Thank you!

Look, I was young and not watching back then but from the clips I've seen, I agree. Shane and Kayla had chemistry! So did Shane and Kim. Don't come for me. 😄😄

That's where I think her childhood experience, fear of abandonment, etc. could be worked in if they wanted to explore her deeper. When I was younger I projected my own trauma as to what created her desire for love and desperate fear of abandonment. The elements have been there all along for her to be a tragic anti-heroine, IMO, even when JER wrote her as the daughter of Satan and Ron wrote/writes her as a masked crusader from a Batman comic. You know it was JER. He wanted to bang Hope only slightly less than Marlena so of course his perceived hero should get a hall pass to bang her too. Get out of jail free card for both, we'll just say they were out of their minds and pretend it's not rape. A big, convoluted 'out' that thumbed it's nose at the two primary fanbases at the time. It was stupid of SSM and Langan to run with it.

Agreed. It's mostly on John but it's a soap and foes folly when they could turn heels on the man instead. Just like life except obviously exaggerated. She was a villain in the end for sure, I loved that and it had it's perks, but with Kristen's backstory going back to childhood and everything that came after, I think they could work her as something more dark grey. Maybe jet black when she misses her meds. 😆😆 With a different creative interpretation I think Kristen has legs, just not as a fully stabilized character. She works best in rotation but she has broad appeal for sure. My sensibilities have always told me that and she alone could generate a decade or more of story. Also yes. If I'm going to watch this show again I want Wayne.

100%. JT as Roman is something I've never been able to reconcile.

Yes, yes, yes. That's why I loved that scene with John and Kristen in the hotel room in 2012. "Did you think I'd stay on the ground where you left me? You treated me like I was something stuck to the bottom of your shoe." Agreed there should be lifelong hatred. At this point I'd say she's done them much dirtier than they did her but back when they first became her catalyst? They kind of had it coming in 2012. That's good. Damn I miss Wayne!

Agreed. I deleted that because the Roman thing is more murky. John did Kristen dirty for sure, though. I'm glad Ron seems to see Kristen as her own character outside J&M's orbit. I love their entanglements but she deserves to be her own character in my opinion, preferably not all black or white but with combustible impulsivity.

Speaking of, this reminds me of the scene where Kristen and Marlena are arguing and Marlena was all "Who stood by John when he was on trial?! It certainly wasn't you. You thought he was capable of murder, you never knew him!" EVERY shred of evidence pointed to John killing Tony. But nope. They gaslit her for 2+ years before she finally snapped. Maybe gaslight is the wrong word. At the very least they weren't honest with a lot of people. Kristen had frailties but John did her dirty. At the end of the day it's a soap and we're picking apart characters I enjoy no matter which side of the story they fell on. But looking back? J&M caused mess and JER swept a lot of that under the rug post-Kristen.

See that's the stuff I'm talking about. Everyone was irredeemable except J&M to Reilly. He allowed a separate moral code where they could emotionally cheat, sometimes physically cheat and gaslight themselves/others but it didn't matter because only their pain was justified.

No, you're right. I adore J&M. They're the center of the show as I see it. I just recognize the pathos of JER.

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I get it.

You said it all... again. JER was winging it by the end. He had his sights on his own show and kind of sabotaged Days on the way out in my opinion. Took everything he spent years building out of rotation at once. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the cards that Kristen gather her wits and tell them to kick rocks on her way out of town where she bumped into amnesiac Steve or something.

😄😄😄 You said every word! I love JER but he was weird as hell. Interesting. That sounds like Kristen to me but I see Sami too, another character whose downward spiral was spawned from JER's belief that everything in the world is sin except cheating as long as you pray first.

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I get it. There's nostalgia with Eileen and I love her. Everybody knows. It just doesn't have the same pull with me anymore. I love them both but Stacy fits today.

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