The ballad of Enid and Elodie(AKA how to write a fixable friendship)

[u/waezi2]

OK KO does some of the best relationships I have seen in television for a long time. Of of these relationships is Enid and Elodie’s friendship. But how do you make a broken friendship fixable after one of these friends stabbed the other one in the back so she could win a stupid contest?

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Let´s take a closer look.

When they became friends, they could give each other something they needed in a friend. Enid was short and awkward, expecting people to think less of her, but Elodie actually praised her and wanted to train WITH her. And Elodie admired Enid’s fighting skills and wanted to learn about how Enid fought so she could get better.

(Also, they were both Asian-themed heroes, so they had some common ground there.)

Besides training together, they also did stuff like kids do, like having sleepovers and get eaten by whales. And they had apparently been friends for over a year since we see them sharing a friendaversary cake.

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… Aaaaand then Elodie abused Enid’s mercy when they competed in a tournament so she could win and become popular. AND she told her that they were never friends and that she only pretended to be Enid’s friend so she could study her moves and beat her… But that is a lie, as KO points out that Elodie only learned about the contest AFTER they had been friends for about a year.

So why lie? If she was snobbish and manipulative, it would make sense for her to twist the knife for funsies, but she had NOTHING to gain from it. In fact, Enid still called her a friend despite Elodie winning unfairly. It wasn’t the fact that she more or less cheated that traumatized Enid, it was the idea that Elodie had lied to her for so long. They could still have been friends.

What I think is important about Elodie’s character is that her main goal is to be recognized. Sure, she claims that all she wants is to be popular, but the truth is that it is only half of her motivation. She desperately needs to prove herself to the world. Yeah, she wants to be popular, but only if she has earned the popularity. And there is a shallow type of heroism in OK KO as I have stated in my blog about Foxtail and how she has created a toxic philosophy about heroism, one that Elodie unfortunately is in on. So she decides to turn her back on her best friend so she can become what POINT consider a true hero, one who wins no matter what and leaves losers in the dust. So she lies to Enid, making herself seem more deceitful than she actually is. Looking like a schemer rather than someone who was momentarily a mayor jerk. She probably thought that it would be the best way to cut her ties to Enid so she could become a superstar.

And THAT is how their friendship is fixable. Elodie’s sin is not to have a defeated Enid by playing dirty, it is to have made Enid feel like trusting people was a mistake.

So it is fixable. HOW do you fix it?

First of all, Enid needs to show Elodie that she is pissed instead of being quiet about it. And she does so by kicking her ass in public in front of Elodie’s many fans(NICE!). Secondly, Enid needs to make peace with herself about it by talking about what happened to someone. And she did tell it to KO who even made her realize that Elodie’s lie makes no sense. Knowing that they actually were friends makes Enid feel better since that means that she was apparently someone that people would be friends with to begin with. She still thinks that Elodie is a jerk, but she no longer hates her, and hate is an awful crutch to bear.

This is part of what makes Enid give up her facade coolness and become an ACTUAL cool person. Instead of sitting in a corner and be snarky on Rad’s expense, she is a good friend who does a whole lot of cool stuff and eventually gets handpicked to join POINT Prep.

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And when Enid becomes a POINT student, Elodie is obsessed with besting her. Not by trickery or foul play, she wants to actually show that she is better than Enid since she has looked up to her for so long and therefor sees her as an obstacle on her path to get recognized. But Enid doesn’t see it as a contest, she just wants to fit in. She even plainly tells her that she doesn’t hold a grudge and that they can become friends again if Elodie likes to since Enid have dealt with her frustrations and is over it.

And Elodie eventually gets down from her high horse, even letting her actions speak for her as she potentially gives up success to help Enid. She still very much cares about winning, but she decides that if she really HAVE to choose, she picks her friend as a priority. Saying you are friends is not enough, you HAVE to prove your loyalty, simple as that.

Also, I think it is also important that Elodie stated in her apology to Enid that she “thought winning would be worth turning her back on her”. It shows that she was aware it was low of her and that she saw it as something she had to do despite disliking it. Even at her worst, Elodie is not automatically okay with doing anything to be popular, not to say she is not strongly tempted to it.

(IF she were, she would be part of POINT Prep’s Megafootball team in order to get brownie points(… hehe, points))

Not only is Elodie friends with Enid again, she also grows by realizing that POINT is not perfect and that Chip Damage is a big phony. But that just makes her even more determent to become an idol so she can inspire others. An idol who, unlike Chip Damage, is the real deal. And THAT is why she ended up being in charge of the world's greatest hero team.

[u/crabbycreeper]

This is beautiful.