#and i like more plot-driven fic usually as opposed to. relationships and Vibes. usually.

[scattered-winter]

would u ever write a coffee shop au <33

probably not. unless there was an armed robbery or something and somebody got shot. or maybe a Vigilante Undercover At A Coffee Shop Doing A Stakeout. smth with plot and intense stakes yk

writer's would you ever

[anthropologicalhands]

R/N for the shipping meme

You mean the ship that has taken over my life for the last 10months?

Yeah I didn’t see this one coming either. And because I tend tobottle up my feelings and just write fic instead of talking about them, you aregetting an essay, my good friend.

I am a huge fan of opposite-attract pairings – the friction issuper fun and usually there is banter and comedic sexual tension. So Rebecca/Nathanielkind of breaks this mold for me. While they do have banter and sexual tension,the appeal comes from how similar they are. They were both raised in well-to-do/wealthyfamilies with dysfunctional parents and extremely high expectations, and whilethey are both intellectually capable and driven for success, it has had a verynegative impact on them as people and where they get their self-worth—they’ve puta lot of value on appearances and how other people perceive them. Nathaniel isa prime example of toxic masculinity to his own detriment and nearly all of hishumiliations and not-great behaviors can be traced to his very rigid ideasabout what it means to be a man, instead of accepting weakness andvulnerability and learning to work through and around it. Rebecca meanwhile, equatedromantic love with fixing all of her problems instead of working on her mentalhealth once she got a competent therapist (prior to leaving a job that was destroyingher on the inside, her previous experiences at getting medical help have notgone great) and thus plot ensued.

Reasons I love them:

They are aware of how attracted to each other the other personis. One of the fun parts of these two is that there is never really a questionthat they find each other attractive –they do, it’s just that their situationsmake the whole thing deeply inappropriate/a bad idea for many, many reasons.And that’s nice. Denial of attraction is still a super fun trope, don’t get mewrong, but something about this is just very refreshing to work with.

Both of them are willing to be vulnerable with each other abouthow they feel. And for two people who lie to themselves pretty consistently, it’sgood to see!

…They need to work on doing this more often, but it’s a start.

Rebecca doesn’t try to change for Nathaniel. Nathaniel isintroduced as the enemy of not only Rebecca but to her friends at large, andRebecca never alters her behavior or tries to alter her behavior to conform tothe ways she thinks he would expect her to behave. Rebecca actively would laughherself sick at the idea of ever doing that for Nathaniel. On Nathaniel’s side,the thing that makes him like Rebecca is her Rebecca-ness. They make fun of thefact that he’s misinterpreted Rebecca and is getting a manic pixie dream girlvibe from her, but then he also gets actively disabused of that notion thatRebecca is just ‘quirky’, as opposed to having deep-seated issues.

Finally, I just like watching them interact, positively or not, theyhave a chemistry that really works for me. The showrunners do talk about howRebecca’s different relationships show different aspects of who she is, and forR/N they described their dynamic as being very raw, which is what makes some oftheir moments very sweet, and given how much time Rebecca spends trying to fitinto someone else’s ideal, that makes them very appealing to me.

(andfor the record, I will fight anyone who says that Rebecca did not have genuinereasons to like Josh, even though other factors are what’s pushing her topursue him so hard, because the boy is legitimately kind and affirming andpositive as a person and having people like that in your life in the rightcapacity is an amazing thing. That being said, they are VERY poorly matched interms of values and interests and expectations and theyboth had a lot of growing to do to even have had a healthy short-termrelationship)

So, to sum up, as a ship, I love them and their messiness,and exploring how they got to their mindsets, how they view each other, and thepossible ways they might get some insights on how to not only make their ownrelationships work, but also how they perceive their own behaviors if theywould just sit and talk. I’ve written way more fic than I ever expected to,pretty much entirely within canon constraints, and am still ridiculouslypleased that I actually wrote a soulmate au that did what I wanted it to do.

That being said, I’m also kind of uneasy, because whilewatching any show with an eye towards a shipping endgame is not a great idea,it’s a particularly bad idea for this one. The creators very much writeromantic beats with an eye towards having the audience fall for them, only toturn them on their head. And they have actively referenced Nathaniel as being verylike Rebecca was circa season one, which means HEAVY denial that he has issues.Which—hey, is part of what made their dynamic appeal to me in the first place!

On the other hand, I am pushing out stories as fast asI can right now so that I don’t have to worry about losing motivation with my existingprojects once season 4 rolls around, because I am 100% convinced that thewriters are going to implode the idea of their relationship so that they canmove on with other things. And if we go by the pattern set by Rebecca’s lasttwo relationships and add the fact that because he’s the most like Rebecca(while not yet having the same self-awareness), Nathaniel is prone to extremebehavior, there is a good chance that the fallout will be…spectacular.

Granted, the show is overall very optimistic andempathetic for its main cast, even when it doesn’t agree with their actions, soI’m assuming that even with the fallout, all of the main characters will have fittinghappy endings, and if the story events still allows R/N to interact positively,I’ll just keep doing my thing. If not, I’ll probably still do my thing anyway froma new angle or in an alternate reality. But I’m not entirely sure how it willgo, so it will definitely be an emotional roller coaster.

…And then there is another side of it. The fandom forCEG is tiny, and while I’ve still carved out a fun bubble to hang out in, I do getannoyed-to-actively-angry about being made to feel embarrassed about shipping,and specifically, that I as a viewer am completely missing the point of theshow by having a ship I fangirl over. And then I feel ridiculous getting angry.Especially because no one that I can see is sending hate or mistagging, sothere’s none of that nastiness like you see in large fandoms, which is a goodthing.

But it’s just…I don’t know. I feel like every time Itry to go outside my bubble, I keep running into a ton ofpassive-aggressiveness about shipping for CEG in general (or the r/n ship inparticular) that just misses the point of why people do it. It’s notomg-they-must-be-together-or-the-show-sux kind of thing (I feel like prettymuch all fans are aware that it’s not about the guys). It’s just fun, it caughtme in the lizard brain, and I keep thinking of stories and conversations that Iwant these characters to have. And due to the nature of this show, I don’t wantto speculate too much because given how the creators like to plot, thesespeculations are likely to be wrong and I don’t want to get too attached tothem. So what do I do? Go into the dynamics that compel me.

Good god what is this.