#it is necessary shorthand for the joke

[benevolenterrancy]

"Have people been making coffee in this thing again??"

@be-the-creature-fan they really need to get a second coffee pot

[theflyindutchwoman]

Of course I'm scared. If we do this and it doesn't work, I'll have ruined the most important relationship in my life. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said, um -- No. Um… You're right. So we should just keep going the way we have been, right? It's not worth the risk. Unless it is.

| ANATOMY OF A SCENE - CHENFORD EDITION 5.08 - The Collar

Words cannot describe how much I love this scene… It's how different and refreshing this is… It's how Lucy has finally allowed herself to come to terms with her feelings for Tim, that he is the one for her… And now that she knows that, she can't brush it off or ignore it any longer. Just like Tim, who wanted to talk about it once he was aware of his own feelings for her. She has caught up to him, ready to be completely open and honest after their conversation in the shop...

It's how mature this feels. There's no need for unnecessary drama, for a shouting match or, worse, for one of them to play dumb. These two have spent years developing a shorthand and are pretty good at communicating, there is no reason for this to be suddenly any different. But most of all, they know each other, their character. They both understood what their willingness to sleep together meant, even if it was under the guise of undercover. They infered the same conclusion : for them to be ready to cross that line, there had to be feelings. The only thing that was holding them back, besides their respective partners, was the fear. The fear of losing the other, of losing this relationship that is so important to them… Of losing their person...

It's how, in the end, this scene feels like a breath of fresh air… Where the respect and love Tim and Lucy have for each other shine through. Where they both take that leap together. And it's how this happens in the parking lot, in front of the station… A place charged with history, where so much has happened lately. This is very close to where Tim fake-proposed to Ashley, with a heartbroken Lucy watching… To where they met the morning after their first kiss, both hopeful and awkward… To where he watched her leave with Chris, the pining and longing written all over his face… And yet, despite all of this, this feels like a brand new place… On the other side of the sidewalk, as they're crossing a symbolic threshold… With a much softer and romantic atmosphere, with all the flowers and plants around them, creating a colorful bubble just for them… Both sitting so close to each other, completely disregarding the chairs nearby… Forgetting the concept of personal space, as always.

It's how Tim was waiting for Lucy, as if they had convened of a meeting at the end of their shift, to end what they started in the shop. An idea that is reinforced when Lucy claims they need to talk as soon as she arrives : she knew where to find him. I'm a bit curious as to what she was actually planning to say before Tim joked about yet another listing and took over the conversation… Regardless, this part illustrates how they are still a bit out of sync. Lucy might have had her revelation, but Tim is very much in the dark in that regard. As far as he knows, she has at best realised that Chris isn't the one… She's one step ahead of him here. And it absolutely shows with the way he goes right back to where their discussion ended in the shop. Asking her again why she is staying with her boyfriend when it's clearly not working. And, while it might sound a bit judgmental, he's simply trying to understand what's stopping her, so he can help her. This is truly about her for him. I like how he zeroes in on her guilt because she did stay with Chris longer than necessary out of guilt and responsibility. For almost cheating on him. For what Rosalind did to him. And it was all the more obvious when she was trying to convince herself that she should love him back, implying that something was wrong with her… She deflects a bit - again - by calling him out for doing the same thing. And she isn't wrong : everything he told her in the shop fitted his relationship with Ashley to a T. He was settling, knowing full well they didn't want the same future, not arguing because it wasn't worth the bother (her retirement plans, the Whole30 diet…). If anything, this highlights how they were both denying their feelings, hiding behind a safe relationship. Not wanting to be alone.

And this is where their frustration boils over… Lucy because the conversation is not going the way she intended and they are getting off topic a little… And Tim because he is getting defensive. He's correct in his assessment : she definitely stayed this long because it was safe. But he couldn't be more wrong about the other part : this has everything to do about him. He is the reason she stayed with Chris (why she even went out with him in the first place, one might argue)… And, ultimately, why she could have never committed to a life with him either. Because he's not Tim. And so Lucy blurts out how she feels, why she is so scared… what she figured out in the shop. Out of frustration and out of nervousness. And because this is something that has been on her mind since their last talk. That's how intense those feelings are : she can't contain them anymore.

'If we do this, I would have ruined the most important relationship in my life'… It may not be a love confession per se, but the implications in this one sentence are huge. And in a way, it feels more powerful and true to them : it encompasses the entirety of their relationship, what he fully means to her. As I said earlier, she's not even questioning if he has feelings for her : she knows. She saw the looks, the signs, the reactions. Like when he was ready to talk about their feelings, something he usually avoids doing… or when he came in her apartment… When he didn't want her to worry about him… or when he said she deserved someone who's worth the bother and effort… What she doesn't know yet, is the extent of these feelings. But it wasn't really the risk of hers being unrequited that was scaring her the most : it was the fear of losing him, of losing what they have. Because their bond is already special, even without the romance. He is her person, the one she trusts completely and implicitly, the one whose opinion matters the most, the one who supports her unconditionally… And it's not like her fear isn't legitimate : she spent the last couple of months believing that she had already ruined everything, when Tim pushed her away (or so she thought). She was devastated in that hallway. And now that they're getting back to where they were, she doesn't want to lose him again.

And Tim… The magnitude of her statement is hitting him in full force. He was so focused on her relationship with Chris that he's completely caught off guard by her confession. He certainly never expected to be this important to her, this significant. To be chosen, let alone be her first choice. Because time and time again, he has been relegated to second choice. Told repeatedly, even if implicitly, that he wasn't enough. So Lucy, of all people, telling him this, is blowing his mind. The micro-expressions on his face are amazing. The editing is as brilliant, with this moment of stunned silence, both needing some time to comprehend what has just happened, emphasising in the meantime the lyrics in the background : 'I'm scared to go home'… And this epitomises what they are feeling so poetically. They are each other's home.

Lucy is the first one to recover, all nervous and terrified that she has said too much. That she has scared him away. But she hasn't. Even when he agrees with her statement, she still doesn't question his feelings for her. She simply takes it as his way of saying they should maintain the status quo and go back to how things were. That it's not worth taking the risk of ruining their current relationship. 'Unless it is…' Her confession is all the final push Tim needed : he has been ready to talk about this and risk everything since that second kiss. He knew what he wanted since then, he just didn't think it was in the cards… But now that she is opening the door a second time, he's not holding back. His sigh… He's gathering his courage before asking her out to dinner. And his grin! He is absolutely elated. And it matters so much that he's the one taking that first step… 'Rules matter, Boot'… But 'some things matter more'. She matters more. He told her earlier that she deserves a relationship that is worth the effort, so it fits perfectly that he would assure her that this one is worth the risk. That THEY are worth the risk. And how heart-warming is it that after all the heartbreak he went through, he doesn't hesitate to take that leap of faith with her… The fact that Lucy was the one who helped him heal along the way and get to this point, just makes all of this even more beautiful.

Her little 'yes' is so adorable… She comes off a little shy at first, becoming more assertive. Tim couldn't look happier, flashing his trademark Lucy Smile… Before experiencing the biggest whiplash when she suddenly says no. The way he's instantly shutting himself off, using his hands almost as a barrier between them, sitting a bit straighter and away from Lucy… How she reaches for his thigh to stop him and reassure him that she hasn't changed her mind… She simply remembered that she is still in a relationship - a detail they both tend to forget in the heat of the moment… And she's right : she needs to break up first. For Chris. And for them. They deserve to start their romantic relationship on a clean slate, with no regret, especially after almost jumping to bed together… While Tim agrees with her, it's clear that he isn't completely convinced either : it's like he is afraid she may change her mind. It's really when she tells him to ask her again, 'after', that he fully grasps that she is just as committed as him. Well, that and how she lights up. That last shot of them, with her little shimmy (the one she always does when she's excited) and his bashful smile while looking down is the cutest thing… It's so soft and full of promises and hope… and the perfect tone to end this scene.

[chaifootsteps]

tried watching that vid about s2 and had to give up when they claimed it wasn't that much worse than s1 and that they didn't think it rewrote/retconned Stella

here's the thing. The common response to criticisms of S2 is that S1 Stella was also as bad. the evidence is usually 'she didn't want to get up to Via, she hogs the blankets, she's a rich classist jerk who hates Stolas slept with an imp not that he cheated, she hired a hit on him'

Going point by point, ep2 Stella is a jerk at worst. She's not necessarily a bad mother for not wanting to get up to Via (couples argue about domestic responsibilities all the time) and the blanket thing suggests she's selfish at worst (it's also a bad shorthand to use for her being a bad wife, 'who hogs the blankets' is a thing couples argue about in a lot of shows and it's sometimes treated as a cutesy joke about how well they know one another if they tease each other about it - it's too small stakes, in other words). her other scenes she does ignore Via, but it's not enough to suggest she doesn't care for her daughter at all because Via came into the kitchen when she was angry that Stolas cheated - which she had every right to be.

the 'just because it was an imp' thing is more complex - for one thing she says 'our bed', not 'my bed', so they were still making the effort by not sleeping in separate beds despite it being a literal palace. for another the worldbuilding is so poor we don't know at this stage in s2 if it's just because she views imps as beneath them both or if she's also worried about reputational damage. after all, in situations where the husband cheats the wife also tends to be equally pilloried, and you could easily imagine a scenario where people talk about Stella as 'such a bad wife her husband cheated with an imp'. not to mention that this argument completely falls apart as making Stella worse than Stolas because Stolas also is classist and looks down on imps; that he fetishizes them enough to sleep with them doesn't make him any better than Stella here

in ep5 Stella escalates to ordering a hit, but we don't know how common this is in Hell. Blitzo mentions he used to take hits on targets in Hell itself, and there is a mafia, but again the worldbuilding is so poor we don't know if 'trying to murder your cheating spouse' is a normal thing in this setting or not. the show has already dialled it up to 11 and left itself nowhere to go. What's worse is if this moment is supposed to get it across to the audience that Stella is Evil then they completely messed it up, because ep5 plays the reveal that Stella was the one who ordered the hit as a black comedy joke. You can't joke to the audience that her taking out a hit on him is meant to be funny and then turn around in s2 and have a dead serious domestic violence storyline; it's complete tonal whiplash and in pretty bad taste imo.

Stolas is usually the focal point for the show's lack of planning but Stella is almost as bad imo. She wasn't so much rewritten as she was flattened and shoved into whatever mould necessary for s2

It's completely head-banging, but not surprising, that the Viv fandom considers "steals the blankets from Stolas" as egregious as "orders a hit on Stolas."

It's all so very poorly planned, and in very poor taste.

[maxwell-grant]

Hello! While speaking with my friend about a concept for a silly little vampire story a question naturally arose; "Why do vampires, of all monsters, lend themselves so well towards humor?"

Hope you have a wonderfully spooky October!

Well hope you have a wonderful October as well!

Honestly I think all monsters lend themselves to humor in ways that haven't been fully tapped into, but I think vampires have that extra edge mainly because the main things that define them (needs to feed on others for sustenance, can't go out in the sunlight, immortal but can be killed in specific ways) are Rules. Rules and structure and consistency are things that you need to build a set-up, because you can't have a punchline without a set-up. Other monsters are more loosely defined, or have only a couple of rules that can usually be ignored, but you can't ignore the basic specifics of vampirism the same way. You can have a werewolf who doesn't turn on a full moon or due to weird birth circumstances related to the number 7, but you need to address the feeding aspect, or you don't have a vampire.

And the counterpoint to that is that vampires, while obviously they have aesthetic signifiers and tropes and Dracula-isms that people go to in defining them, are nowhere near as bound to their aesthetic traits as other kinds of monsters, so you can make anything and everything a vampire so long as you establish that parasitic aspect and the rules. If want to make your characters specific kinds of monsters you generally have to include the aesthetic signifiers that define them: Frankensteins generally need to be some kind of stitched-up corpse and/or giant, mummies need to have the wrappings or the lore, zombies need to cadaverous undead, werewolves need to be some kind of horrible animal (not necessarilly a wolf - Brazilian werewolves are commonly said to be more akin to pigs and boars, for example), but vampires?

If it's a parasitic monster that needs to feed on something otherwise it dies, and that something isn't just regular food, pretty much anything you do with them is fair game. The more out there you go with it, usually the better.

And because they're among the most popular unambiguous kind of monster (skeletons, witches, ghosts and aliens are there still but all sorta morphed into their own things overtime, vampires you still find at the forefront of every Halloween pack), everyone is familiar with what those rules are on the baseline, which means you have a much, much easier time doing jokes about the specifics of vampires than with any other kind of monster, and so it becomes more necessary to focus on specifics of the vampire's personality to make them stand out. Generally speaking, a Frankenstein is a type of character, a werewolf is half of a character when not in frenzied bloodlust, a ghost can be one or several characters, a zombie used to be a character, but a vampire needs to be a character, if you're not doing a Dracula pastiche (and even then) you can't bank on the shorthand as easily. It's a very competitive field.

Everybody knows the specifics of how vampires work, and so you get to play them straight or subvert them for comedy, and even make up new kinds of vampires out of twisting the premise around. A lot of what makes Colin Robinson from What We Do In The Shadows so funny is that, placed opposite a cast of fairly traditional vampires as somehow the most mundane personality as well as the weirdest freak among them, they can and do just constantly make up new shit about the way his existence and powers and biology works and get away with it, and constantly set you up for surprises more so than with the others. And they even still kinda do that for the others. All vampire media needs to place it's characters across a spectrum of possibilities.

Doesn't show up in mirrors, can't cross running water, needs to be invited into places, needs to stop and count marbles, needs to sleep in coffins, needs ancestral soil within said coffins to sleep in, etc. Needs to feed their blood to victims to reproduce, or actually doesn't need to do that. Can go centuries without a sip, or needs to kill a person every day to not die, or can just feed on cattle / the color red / other fluids. Can walk in the sun but weakened, can walk in the sun unbothered, can walk in the sun with careful skincare routines made from human sweat, instantly desintegrates if they play the desert level in a videogame, and so on.

Once you get past the baseline, you actually can get a lot more out of just piling up both weird new powers you never have to explain, as well as bullshit rules and specifics atop each other, because that's just how Vampire Lore works, and naturally each and everyone of those can be squeezed for comedy as well as horror. It's that old adage about how horror is comedy without the punchline and both need a dramatic investment into the set-up of how it works, before it can be torn down dramatically or comedically.

To be clear, I think this is something you can and should do more or less with all kinds of monster characters, but the thing is that, most of the others you do need you to go the extra mile and define them, what defines them, what if any are the rules and standards and limitations they live with. With ghosts and mummies and bugbears you do need to tug a bit at the concept and ask questions and walk your audience through some of those questions to get somewhere more than surface/aesthetic-based gags with them, where as with vampires, you can kinda skip a lot of that and just get to work pulling comedy out of the basic set-up and then subverting that.

Because yes, vampires live by codes and structures and rules, but there's also nothing we like more than telling those to get stuffed so we can do whatever we want. You need something to rebel against in order to rebel at all.

[bestworstcase]

If watts is from mantle like you say that honestly makes him even more of a bastard, because much like cinder or Adam he took what was a slight against basic compassion as a personal attack against him specifically, and was perfectly happy massacring his fellow mantle citizens to get his petty payback against ironwood,

At the end of the day while he may have come from humble beginnings, he’s still an egotistical self obsessed prick

so anyway another thing about watts is the narrative conspicuously separates him from the volume eight tussling over what salem really wants. the reason that interests me so much is that watts is extremely comfortable around salem—man swans up to her teleconference grimm to obnoxiously knock on its head and heckle cinder, immediately after lionheart quaveringly promised not to waste her time. he’s indirect and dramatic about telling her qrow found the spring maiden (“a little birdie told us”) and salem’s reaction, of turning to lionheart and telling him to explain, suggests that watts is just like that. in volume six his response to her implication that cinder survived is to scoff and say “you’re joking, how could you know that?” and the only reason he backs down is because tyrian flies off the handle about it.

the only time salem herself reprimands him for any of this is when she tells him off for being cruel to cinder, which she handles rather politely (“dr. watts, do you find such malignance necessary?”). QED, watts does not modulate his shitheel behavior with salem whatsoever because he knows that she 1. doesn’t care, and 2. will calmly tell him when he’s crossed a line with her. there is a level of casual trust here that no one else in the inner circle exhibits.

watts is also the only one of salem’s cabal whose personal goal is obfuscated in, frankly, much the same way that salem’s is; he hates atlas but there is no specificity as to his emotional motivation for wanting to proverbially burn it down. the narrative lines up enough pieces to suggest he’s from mantle, slips in the fact that he faked his own death to get out of the atlesian military, and then brings out his fury over ironwood’s exploitation and disrespect to underscore the point. the fandom focuses on “you chose that fat imbecile over me!” to the exclusion of everything else in order to confirm the pre-existing feeling that watts is just a petty, arrogant asshole, but the picture rwby is actually painting here is of a man who violently ripped himself out of the proto-fascist machinery of the atlesian military and dedicated the rest of his life to getting rid of it completely. the penny project is merely the focal point. a singular concrete incident that has become an emotional shorthand for everything else.

anyway the point is, i don’t think watts knew precisely what salem intends to do with the relics, but i do think he had a fairly accurate understanding of who she is; his irreverence and casually obnoxious antics come from a place of recognizing that she doesn’t give a flying fuck—that she will, at worst, calmly push back if he does something she is unwilling to tolerate and that a certain show of deference is occasionally necessary to placate her deranged assassin—and likewise his scrupulous loyalty and respect feel considered in a way that the rest of the cabal’s do not.

hence the necessity of removing him completely from the plot point about how nobody really knows what salem is after. watts is kind of the anti-tyrian in that he is every bit as dedicated to her cause but his reasons for being so are wholly unexplained to the audience even though it is entirely obvious that he does HAVE ironclad reasons—which leaves the sort of people who refuse to ascribe agency or interiority to villainous characters unless it’s spelled out in bold print grasping for the wildly silly reading that watts is being led around blind by a petty grudge and actually salem doesn’t respect him or his contributions at all, never fucking mind that disrespect for him and his work is exactly his grievance with ironwood, and never mind that out of everyone in her cabal, watts is clearly the one salem holds in the highest regard

[threadsun]

It’s always the ones who claim to be antis interacting with people who post the stuff they claim to very against. Especially when they say ‘Dni proshippers’ but then interact and make dark content. It’s become very clear that they don’t have a set definition of what proship is they just slap it wherever to define people who make content they don’t like. They make fiction spaces online messy and frankly, dangerous when they decide to make callout posts and block lists and such. They’re so hypocritical:(((

Oh god I reblogged a post about the bullshit of proship/antiship discourse the other day. It's SOOO STUPID!!! Especially in a time where books about queer people and informative books for children about how to spot and report csa are being pulled from public libraries and banned in various places under the guise of them being "morally reprehensible" and "bad for the children."

There is no way to dictate what people can and can't write without opening the door to fascism and oppressive censorship. There's no way to make a line without risking people pushing that line until it hurts real marginalised people.

Like as a Jewish person I generally hate holocaust comparisons, but like... idk I always go back to the nazi book burnings at Die Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and the targeted harassment of Magnus Hirschfeld. So much important information about sex, gender, and sexuality were lost and suppressed. So much important research. Important work into the normalisation of sex and desire.

It has lasting impacts even now into the field of sexology, which is still treated as either a joke or some sort of perverted fake field for creeps to use as an excuse to take advantage of people. When I studied sexology in university, so much of it always came back to the idea that censorship is inherently detrimental to sexual liberation. Which in turn my gender studies professors all agreed is necessary for queer and female liberation as well.

Like this goes so much further and deeper than fandoms and ships, and it's so reductive and pointless to turn it into a fandom debate. Especially in the current political climate around the world. And to turn it into fandom drama or even to morally posture about being proship or an anti does a huge disservice to the people fighting on the front lines of queer and sexual liberation. It harms trans people and people of colour who are being targeted through censorship.

Idk in a world where consensual kink is still illegal in most places, where queer theory and critical race theory are being censored, where sex workers and kinky folks are actively fighting tooth and nail for your right to watch porn without the government telling you what you can and can't jack off too... In a world where FOSTA/SESTA is being used to actively harm sex workers and the victims of trafficking they claim to be helping. It's just... idk it's almost actively, wilfully, maliciously ignorant to think ship discourse is important enough to harass people over. To think that censoring fandom content is useful and morally correct.

I'm not so fussed about call out posts and block lists personally cause I don't care if "queer is a slur" "no kink at pride" "if you're not vocally antiship then you're proship which means I can make up beliefs to assign to you and then send people to harass you for it" assholes try to bother me. The block button is fun to press, and I've got thick skin and an actual understanding of the real world.

But yeah, they can make internet spaces pointlessly and actively hostile to people, especially people whose mental health is already fragile. And I've heard so many definitions of proship that it's soooooo clear no one actually has a real definition of it, and just use it as shorthand for "this person is a freak who makes things I don't like, and I think that means they should be punished in the court of public opinion for it."

idk I've seen too many sex workers and transfem people and Jewish people accused of being paedophiles and perverts and "proship" for daring to not follow Christian ideas of sexual purity and morality. I've been the Jewish, transfem sex worker getting called those things. I watched a trans woman get harassed off tumblr entirely for having an armpit fetish and daring to talk about it on her own blog.

I've seen countless people who called out racist/queerphobic/transmisogynistic trends in fandom get the "proship" label slapped on them just to drive them out of fandom spaces so they could keep their bigoted headcanons. I've seen it put on people who ship two unrelated characters who happened to know each other as children because "that's basically incest." I've seen it slapped on someone who wrote about adults in a consensual relationship who happened to have a 10 year age gap (34 vs 44).

And yeah, I've seen it put on people who write paedophilic incest fanfics, which is something I personally would prefer no one ever wanted to write about. But I also acknowledge that if I try to make that an actual rule, it will eventually become corrupted into something used for the oppression of marginalised people.

I know that I shouldn't be trusted with the power to dictate the actions (and especially the thoughts) of others. I know that thoughtcrimes aren't real, and that the world is so much bigger and messier and more complicated than fandom. I know that the moment I allow myself to become pro-censorship in any capacity, I've already lost and fascism has already gained a new foothold in the world.

And most of all, I know that all art including fandom art is something the artist and the people interacting with it are both choosing to consent to. That this consent can be revoked at any time, and that no one has the right to decide what anyone else can and cannot consent to. That all fiction is a scene, not a new reality, and that the consent of the real people involved is more important than what's actually going on within the scene.

[notsuch]

Why is it there's guaranteed to be an Australian man in American media named Bruce?

GOD, I LAUGHED SO HARD WHEN I READ THIS. Notes: this pertains to white Australian history, whilst Australia is a multicultural country with people all over the world here, so you'll find ALL sorts of names here lmao.

SHORT ANSWER: IT'S THE FAULT OF THIS MONTY PYTHON SKIT. Which went on to be used as comedic shorthand for a set of Australian Character Tropes. Like how we now use Karen or Chad nowadays. I will say you can't find the rest of the skit (it's not really necessary to watch....), nowadays, as half of it is about how Bruces are often drunk, racist, sexist, homophobic assholes, that you find in these kinds of regional areas.

Long Answer: the name was actually popular in the 1930-40s in Australia more so than in other English-speaking countries, though it can be found all over ofc, roughly, so that by the 60s, it was representative of that WWII generation of tough hard men, many of whom were called Bruce that then went on to form the stereotype of Bruce that the Monty Python writes ended up encountering themselves: the most Aussie bloke to ever wear an Akubra. He's big, scary, and can crush a beer can on his bicep, he roams the outback, he can shear a sheep and he's never cried in his life. He's not just a bloke, he's The Bloke. This one we actually fully adopted ourselves, and it signifies a distinctively older generation of Australians, both good and bad. We now often use it to avert expectations, too, aka Bruce the Shark in Finding Nemo. He's a big scary Great White Shark, but surprise! He doesn't eat fish!

And yes: like Karen, the skit and subsequent use as a stereotype, has killed the name. Apparently, there was only a whole 8 Bruces born this year lmao. So a lot of modern Aussies won't have the name and will go WHO EVEN HAS THE NAME BRUCE HERE?! It's distinctively our grandfathers' generation kind of thing.

........... you will actually meet older Aussies sometimes called Bruce though and every one of them has been the stereotype so hard that growing up post this joke existing you just stare at like WHAT, HOW??? The main Bruce I know is a 70-year-old ex-army engineer who fixes up boats these days and doesn't see why at his age he SHOULDN'T tug of war wrestle his friend's St. Bernand Dog........ he also fell over in a boat once and like, broke some ribs and literally said "she'll be right" until his wife forced him to go to the hospital. So sometimes there is truth in fiction I guess lmao.

A modern Australian example of this is Dave. Everyone knows a fucking Dave. Dave does stupid shit at the party when he's drunk and NO ONE KNOWS HOW HE'S ALIVE. Junkrat, for instance, would pull a classic Dave. Darren is also a close second.

[bellshazes]

*holds up a microphone* hello. would you like to say anything about the bits of the ruins fic where etho and bdubs interacted? thank you for your time

in the earliest drafts I think I imagined the etho bits to be a placeholder, bc it was easy for me to write, but of course that eventually meant etho got to explain the thesis of the fic. i would have given some of his role to some scenes of Ren helping Joe write the poem but I wanted to publish this before the heat death of the universe. and to be fair, I'm like 90% sure "I've been here all along... for a day or so" is what he literally says in the episode. (this is the corollary to the thesis.)

I like it when etho gets mean and I like it when he explains other people to themselves, which is also a callback to etho telling bdubs that bdubs doesn't like to wear armor and kind of arguing with him about it bc he noticed it during OOGE all the way back in early mindcrack s3. which is the first time he threatens to move into bdubs basement.

when he accuses bdubs (correctly) of being afraid of making something imperfect, inviting and then calling out bdubs' tendency to use his narcissistic persona to obfuscate that he's talented AND flawed, he is being mean but in the normal way being mean to each other is a nice thing. because I do think the craziest thing is etho doesn't actually mind being put on a pedestal by bdubs; bdubs does do the thing he's being accused of, but it's tempered by the fact that bdubs' falling on his own sword is almost always in service of a setup for someone else. and in letting bdubs know he'll not support the king he lets bdubs be pivoting around him instead, providing the other necessary inertia to close (start?) this chapter of the king saga. they gift each other iterating patterns, so he's a little totemic.

and writing that part was what made me able to finish the story, even though it meant accepting I wasn't going to get to sun God bdubs and the formation of the court in this fic. bdubs mentioning getting the scenes in the right order eventually is a joke for myself about how many times I agonized over reording scenes, but pivoting around etho made it clear I had to put the parkour explanation at the end, because it's the explanation for their silent understanding: bdubs may believe that perfect people make perfect things (e.g. his nonsequitur defenses of washed up etho) and therefore that to make an imperfect thing marks you as imperfect, but in setting up a scenario where true perfection was never an option, all failures constitute success (problems to solve).

and this is tied to Joe's poem saying that there may yet be redemption for Ren without the man of the clock at his side. but bdubs convinced him to become king - he was sick during a lot of the events, but he gets credited for starting a good story. if I had included cub's winning of the dragon head, I'd have driven the point deeper that bdubs quests may not have been initially about the king storyline but he takes advantage of parallels and spins them into legacies. etho is a pretty good shorthand for all of that because of their history, and because he never fucking says things explicitly even though he loves explaining things people already know. subtext! subtext all the way down!

[trenchgardens-ooc-ooc-ooc-ooc]

this is totally tangential and not important to whatever the current zeitgeist is, (i've been zoning out) but does anyone else get irked with the like abbreviations used for political oppinions/rhetorical. not like a judgement for who is or isn't using them, its shorthand obviously, reductionism is a necessary evil for any kind of expedient communication, but like for example proship antiship and anti-anti, like augh. like its an abbreviation for pro-shipping... problematic stuff i guess, but it sounds so silly. proship porship these words mean nothing to me /half joke.

[dulcetash]

In Which I Claw Off My Blinders So That I May Examine Them

So, I’ve been having a high old time with Dracula Daily, and I’m learning fascinating new things along the way.  A dear friend shared how formative Jonathan Harker’s May 16th entry in Dracula had been for her from earliest memory, in response to my reblog of this post, wherein I’d encountered an enlightening, new-to-me definition of “swoon.”

Her words led me to confront something about myself that has been creeping around the edges of my brain for awhile.  I’m truly bothered by my lack of awareness and lack of-, of impressionability, in my own youth, to this kind of formative influence.  To put it bluntly, I am a basic, basic bitch.

I started to respond on the original post, but my thoughts rapidly spun out in a way that would derail that post’s thesis, so I’m giving them their own space here.  I rarely share of myself in public this way, but it seems necessary tonight. So here is my reply:

... it’s a fantastic passage.  And the first time I read it, probably when I was in my 20s, it went right over my head.  So many things that I’m now finally learning to see as queer-coded, or even just sexually coded, were a gigantic blind spot for me until, well, pretty much my 40s (likewise, some of these meta posts on DD are teaching me to see anti-semitic coding that I had NO IDEA about: separate issue, same source).  And this “bit of well-known shorthand,” with regard to swooning?  It certainly wasn’t known by me, AND I WAS AN ENGLISH MAJOR.  

All those jokes you see today about those dense heteronormative scholars who say, “these women who wrote about the joys of undressing each other, you must understand it was merely a form of social bonding that indicated emotional closeness and the discomfort of corsetry, blah blah blah...” I have been that dense reader for most of my life.  My own formative coming-of-age literature went from Beverly Cleary and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott and even friggin’ Sweet Valley High, directly to rapey 80’s bodice-rippers and Stephen King.  There was no transition or middle ground between tender/sweet/romantic/sexless and titillating/explicit/traumatic.  And for whatever reason, I never thought to imagine any.

In that Jane Eyre podcast I’ve been listening to, one of the hosts mentioned Rochester’s threat to rape Jane, and I was like, *record scratch* -wait WHAT?  She referred to this:

“Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.”

And I… I never thought about what that meant.  I was raised without physical violence (thank god), but I was also raised to feel that a man being angry at me was the most terrifying possible circumstance.  I never once imagined what the anger might lead to; the anger itself was The Bad Thing to be avoided.  So if I HAD been asked to imagine what form Rochester’s violence might take, it would have been, like, hurling crockery or some similar tantrum.  Jane Eyre fell into the tender/sweet/romantic/sexless category for me, so anything else was literally unthinkable. 

Later, In the same scene, he gets more explicit:

"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence--you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh, Jane! come, Jane, come!"

And STILL.  I’m like, yeah, Rochester’s a drama-llama all right, he imagines that tearing her chest open to get at her spirit might just be a fresh alternative to locking her in his attic, what a character.  It never occurred to me that he was thinking, “I could sexually compromise her, and then she’d be ruined and have no choice but to stay with me.”  It’s not like you even have to squint to see it, I just… had these huge blinders.  

For fuck’s sake, I’m one of those sweet summer children who thought for way too long that “Netflix and Chill” literally meant to relax and watch movies together.  Thank god I was never really on the dating scene; I thought “inviting someone up for coffee” was literally an invitation to sit around and drink coffee and converse about life.  In a previous century I’d have been that ditz nerding out over the chance to see etchings.  I NEVER KNEW ABOUT THE SEX CODE.

I find that I am angry and disappointed in the culture that raised me not to see, much less analyze, various forms of physical desire.  This culture was also deeply homophobic, not in an openly hostile or aggressive sense, but in a true “fear of” sense that manifested as nobody talking about it.  Ever.  Sometimes there were hushed whispers, quickly shut down by firm denials.  It was just weird.  Not a reason to be MEAN to someone, oh no, but as a default, Don’t Think About It; it’s an embarrassing affliction, and it’s not polite to point.  So I didn’t.  And what you don’t think about, you don’t see.  

But I also find that I am angry and disappointed in myself, about my own lack of curiosity about all of those locked doors.  About my own complacency - complicity? - in Not Thinking About Things.  As I became an adult and started to encounter People On the Internet who avidly DID think about queer romance, I was perplexed by all of these folks who seemed so determined to see things in media that - *tsk* - just weren’t there.  “People can love and care about each other without it being SEXUAL,” I’d think, because for me, the sweetest, least-problematic examples of love in media had always culminated in a kiss. And apparently, I need things explicitly spelled out.  I mean, clearly, who I am today versus who I was 20 years ago means I can learn and evolve, but also, clearly, I am the walking cautionary tale on Why Representation Matters.

*sigh*  Without knowing the code, I’ve missed out on so much.  And my own self-concept has been stunted.  Once I’m done processing and mourning that, I can look forward to rediscovering old literary and cinematic favorites through a more enlightened lens.  No wonder Wizard of Oz and rainbows are queer touchstones.  It’s like seeing colors after a greyscaled lifetime of dismissing them as a vanishingly rare phenomenon.

[dearestones]

Behind the Camera (Yandere! Alex Kralie x Reader)

Warnings: Yandere character, implied stalking.

Anonymous Request: Yandere Alex Kralie with Reader who avoids Him please? ( of course if you still writing for Marble hornets) -♠️

.

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Hanging out with Alex Kralie used to be so much fun. He was a nerd for old, niche movies and while you could see where he was coming from, you relentlessly teased him for his taste. In response, he claimed that you were mistaken and projecting your imperfections onto him, but you disagreed.

He tried to prove you wrong, but with every movie that you watched, the more convinced you were that this man could not have been a film student. Despite the fact that he knew his way around cameras and was often seen with one of those older models, you were more than sure that his vision was a bit too broad and too specific to be applied to his—admittedly, amateur—abilities. You had said as much, but he ignored your concerns.

For a while, that was it. The both of you would try to arrange a date where you would enjoy terrible movies—films, as Alex would say—and then argue about it. Verbal sparring usually occurred, but the blows were glancing and feelings weren’t hurt too badly.

Somehow, one day, Alex changed.

The light in his eyes had dimmed, his jokes became bitter and sarcastic, and you could tell that he was running away from something. You knew that something had happened to Amy, his girlfriend for many years, but you never had the courage to ask about the break up. All you knew was that Alex was with Amy when she left, but Amy had never returned any of your calls or texts.

It seemed that she had disappeared.

And you didn’t know what to make of it.

Questions led you nowhere, confrontation led to anger and an eventual blow up between you and Alex. For a while, you thought that it had been the end of it. You didn’t hang out with Alex or try to investigate and Alex left you alone. However, before life seemed to resume back into its normal, if boring state, Alex started calling you.

And you ignored him.

Alex started texting you.

And you blocked his number.

That should have been the end of that, but he didn’t think so. Instead of taking the hint and properly moving out of your life forever, the strangest thing happened.

Every day, without fail, you would wake up, eat your breakfast, and if circumstances demanded it, you would open your front door.

And you did.

Every single day.

Outside your door, there would be a series of cassette tapes. Some of them were named, the tape on them a bland color compared to the harsh strokes of dark black ink from a marker. You weren't sure what to make of the strange, incoherent jumble of letters and numbers with the date appended onto the title. Were they codes? Shorthand for something?

You were never too sure.

(You had a feeling that Alex was behind this, but you didn’t want to entertain that thought).

It was the tapes’ contents that had your heart stuttering into an uneasy rhythm. At first, you didn’t have the stamina or the energy to deal with this nonsense. Tapes with weird cryptic messages taped to the sides? Whatever. You could deal with it.

But the tapes continued to mount in number until you had just over two dozen of the stupid things. You were annoyed, yes, but then you were intrigued.

It took a while to get the right equipment in order to watch the cassettes, but you pushed forward. It didn’t matter that you had to fork over more cash than you thought was necessary or that you had a camcorder that you knew you were going to use once.

You selected one of the tapes at random, hoping that it was just some garbage. Maybe it was a ripped movie or somebody’s old home videos that were going to be more boring rather than scandalous. All of that hope left you immediately when you actually studied the contents in the tapes.

At first, you had been confused.

You saw… Trees, lots of trees. Shots of cars passing by on the street. The sun set until the screen was filled with darkness.

But then—

A familiar street. A familiar line of houses. A familiar door.

Your door.

Your house.

And then—

You went through the tapes. Each of them were scoured for their contents, dissected like a high school experiment.

At first, the tapes consisted of scenes outside of your home. Sometimes, you could see yourself puttering behind your windows or taking a walk outside if you needed to exercise. At first, seemingly harmless, but then you started watching the more recent cassettes.

Someone had filmed you buying groceries, going out for walks, giving a stranger directions to a nearby park.

Someone had filmed you reading in your living room, cooking in the kitchen, and going about your daily life like any other person would.

The only thing that kept you from panicking completely was that the point of view of the person—Alex, it was Alex, but you didn’t want it to be Alex—operating the camera was that they were always on the outside looking in. Not once had they breached your door and stepped inside your private space.

However—

Once you reached the bottom of the pile, you realized that there was one final tape. Unlike the others, the footage was short and to the point. No meandering shots of the outside that would have lulled you into security. No ‘bait and switch’ cliches that would be the cause of one or two heart attacks.

No. What you saw was someone—Alex, Alex, Alex!!!—approaching your door, a pale hand grasping the doorknob, and turning it. As expected, the door wouldn’t budge because you always kept it locked.

The person jostled the camera—you could hear them rummaging for something in their pockets—until you heard a strange thing.

A jangling of keys.

Your breath stilled.

The person neatly inserted the key into the lock—practiced, the motion was practiced!—and it turned with a click.

For a moment, the tape glitched, the image distorting until a voice finally filtered through. For the first time, a sound other than footsteps and the surrounding ambience was heard.

“Stop avoiding me.”

And the screen went blank.

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DISCLAIMER: I do not condone yandere behavior outside of fictional settings. Please don’t mistake the actions of fictional characters displayed in works of fiction to be considered harmless in real life.

If you want to donate a Ko-Fi, feel free https://ko-fi.com/devintrinidad.

MARBLE HORNETS MASTERLIST

[tishinada]

For the WIP asks—can I get a wildcard? Author’s choice! :D

Ah, thank you! Of course, that puts the hard work of deciding on me, lol... Hmm, let's go with an excerpt from the SW-JC-SM-encntr. Which is not a terribly clever name, just shorthand for Sith Warrior-Jedi Consular-Smuggler-Encounter, meant to help me ID it at a glance

BACKGROUND: This is tentatively planned to be a meeting a few months after Ucevi defeated Baras and was formally recognized as Wrath. She's been trying to track down information on someone. Through her network, she ended up getting an offer of a meeting with the Barsen'thor that appears legitimate (involving the mediation of Master Timmns, and Ucevi takes a lot of precautions after accepting.) She's accompanied by Jaesa, and this is part of the conversation that occurs after they enter the building where the meeting will occur, probably mostly in the elevator.

>>>>>>>

Jaesa laughed softly before sobering abruptly. “Why me today rather than Vette, though? I mean, aside from letting me tell them myself that I want to stay with you?”

“Because I want you to be yourself, even embarrass me if you think you need to, hopefully convincing them that no, I don’t terrorize my people and I’m not the monster they probably believe I am. And while Vette could do that, she was perfectly capable of saying exactly what she thought in front of Baras himself and damn the consequences, so she isn’t exactly an ideal candidate for anything except proving that nothing’s crushed her spirit.”

“It doesn’t help that we’ve been spreading the very stories they probably believe.”

“Also true, but necessary. But it was either you or Quinn today, and Quinn would never willingly embarrass me in front of anyone. And this is a Jedi. I'll never deliberately put him in the position of having to be polite to a Jedi.”

“Of course, everyone knows I spend every waking moment in terror of you, Master.” Jaesa was cheerfully unconcerned, grinning mischievously.

“Hmm, and was it terror that led you to put that really awful life-sized holo of Vowrawn inside my closet?”

“Oh, no, Master, I’ve never even seen that sort of holo before. It must have been Vette.”

“Vette snuck honey into my ash tea and she hasn’t been allowed back into my quarters without supervision since." Ucevi made a disgusted face. "Ugh, sometimes I feel like I'll never get that taste out of my mouth, and in ash tea of all things. TwoVee confirmed you, not Vette, had been in our quarters that morning, by the way. Besides, how do you know what kind of holo it was if you didn’t put it there?”

“Um… the Force told me?” Jaesa giggled when one browstalk shot up skeptically.

“You know, I felt like I needed a mind wipe after seeing that picture. Sending it to the incinerator still hasn’t cleansed the image out of my memory, and I never want to know how you got that. I’m just glad Quinn didn’t see it; he’d have been traumatized. If you’re going to torment me, at least choose jokes that don’t put my sex life at risk.”

“Please, Master, my innocent ears!”

“Innocent my ass, every time Pierce mentions a new kink in your hearing, who has to explain it later? And the only reason I knew the soundproofing on my quarters wasn’t very good was because you and Vette snickered so openly in the mornings and gave it away.”

“Master, I have no idea what you are talking about. And any rumors that I won a bet with Vette about whether Quinn even knew you had a name besides ‘my lord’ are lies.” Jaesa's smile was all innocence.

The elevator door opened, and the taller woman mock-glared. “Apprentice, taking bets about my sex life pushes the boundaries of my very generous tolerance.”

“Oh, please. When Vette and I made that bet, we thought we’d catch you two on the bridge with the door shut, being mushy. We didn’t expect to overhear him saying ‘Ucevi’ that way. Well, yelling it to be more accurate…”

“Apprentice, if Quinn ever finds out you overheard that, I’ll take you to Korriban and make you eat raw K’lor’slug as one of your trials.”

“You keep threatening me with that, and I don’t believe for a moment that you ever ate it yourself.” Jaesa failed to suppress her snicker as they stepped out of the elevator and crossed the reception area toward the door, then she sobered. “Do you think they’ll record the meeting?”

“Absolutely. They’ve had cameras on us since we entered the building, if not before.” Suddenly the golden yellow eyes looked directly into the camera, smirking knowingly.

“Shit, why didn’t you tell me? Here I’ve been going on about Pierce watching your ass and teasing you about your sex life!” The young human woman flushed a brilliant red.

“And that’s one of the reasons I brought you with me. Relax, this is one of the few times we don’t need to hide that our relationship is friendship and not fear. Not that this honesty isn’t dangerous in its own way, but sometimes I have to weigh the risks to the crew.”

>>>>

Because there's not a chance in hell that Ucevi wouldn't expect and recognize recording devices, lol. Or probably have had someone scope out the building minutely beforehand (Vette comes to mind...)

My original plan was to have The Smuggler there with the Barsen'thor rather than her taking the risk of one of her own people slipping to the Jedi Council, but as I developed The Smuggler for Dance, I realized that she and Ucevi shouldn't meet until Yavin IV. So if I include this scene, there will be someone else with the Barsen'thor.

Thank you so much, and hope the snippet gives you a few laughs!

[otp-armada]

If Jason wanted to convince me that Lxa was the love of Clarke's life, he wouldn't have killed her off, effectively cutting their love story permanently, with 4.5 seasons left of the show. Their arc, starting with their introduction in 2x07 and concluding with L's death in 3x07, is 17 episodes long, accounting for 17% of the entire narrative. If I generously add 3x16 to the count, an episode in which L is already dead in the corporeal world Clarke is trying to return to, it's a whopping, grand total of 18%. An 18% congruous with Clarke's intense connection to Bellamy and vice versa, which even A.lycia confirmed as romantic. Feelings romantic enough to spur the formation of a love triangle. An 18% ignoring Clarke's ultimate choice to go back to her people when L wanted her to stay.

CL is a chapter in the story begun and wrapped up in the first half of the narrative. And that's omitting further illumination on the finer details making CL so problematic for Clarke. Do you expect me to believe it was coincidental for CL to occur at a time when Clarke was spiraling down a dark path, commencing with Finn's death? Who played a hand in forcing Clarke's own hand, with Finn, and TonDC, and Mount Weather? Whose example inspired her to ensnare herself in armor and warpaint to be strong enough to save her people? Whose behavior did she emulate in the pushing away of support from her people? Who gave her a place to continue hiding from Bellamy, her mom, and her friends? A place to be someone other than Clarke Griffin? In lieu of facing her fears like the heroine she is? The purpose of CL wasn't to provide Clarke with a magnificent, fairy tale romance gone tragically wrong. I believe Jason's intent with the relationship aimed to further damage Clarke's psyche after L's death, to solidify the belief that her love is not only deadly to its recipients but renders her too weak to do what must be done for survival.

After 3x16, CL is an often superfluous namedrop or two per season for Clarke to briefly react to before carrying on with the plot. Season 5 aside, most of these references are needless enough to be able to interpret them as attempts at reparations for the L/CL fandom's benefit -and their views- without altering the course of the story. Crazy me for thinking it's not enough to constitute an ongoing love story. Crazy me for not thinking this was on par with interactions between living characters. Crazy me for thinking it doesn't befit a love story for the protagonist.

This sliver of the story is what Jason and the CLs would have us unquestionably believe is the pervasive love story of The 100's seven seasons?

Despite his lie and the constant gaslighting from the pineapple CLs, some of us know how to decipher what a temporary love interest is. Lxa? I think you know where I'm heading with this.

I'll acknowledge my admittedly negative appraisal of CL as someone who recognizes its value to the LGBT+ community and treats it as valid while not caring for L/CL on a narrative level. I felt, when swayed by L's influence, Clarke became the antithesis of what I found admirable about her. I resented Clarke's acquiescence of her power to the commander. I wanted nothing more than to remove the wedge L had driven between Clarke and Bellamy.

Let me try to give L/CL the benefit of the doubt for a minute. I don't hold L as responsible for Clarke's choices, but I recognize the prominent role she played in their upbringing. The push and pull was an intriguing aspect of their dynamic, as was the chance to meet a manifestation of who Clarke might have been if she was all head, no heart. Her fall from grace was arguably necessary for her to be a fully-rounded character, not a Mary Sue. It wouldn't be realistic for the protagonist of a tragic story about a brutal world to be a pure cinnamon roll. When forgiveness is an innate theme with Clarke, it would be my bias at work if I was content with her applying it to everyone but Lxa. Clarke saw enough commonalities between her and L to identify with the latter. When she extended forgiveness to L, I believe it was her way of taking the first step on the path to making peace with herself by proxy. None of this means I wanted them paired up. At best, I made my peace with seeing the relationship through to its eventual end. In time for L's death, ironically. My passivity about them notwithstanding, my conclusions are, however, supported by canon.

If I may submit a Doylist reason for romantic CL? Jason knew he had a massive subfandom itching to see them coupled, thereby boosting ratings and generating media buzz. A Watsonian reason? Without relevance, I think L would have been another Anya to Clarke. Grapple shortly with the unfair taking of a life right as they choose to steer towards unity, melancholy giving way to the inconvenience of the loss of a potential, powerful political ally. Romance ensured her arc with L would have the designated impact on Clarke's character moving forward in the next act.

For a show not about relationships, Jason has routinely used romantic love as a shorthand for character and dynamic development. It's happened with so many hastily strung together pairings. And when it does, everyone and their mother bends over backward to defend the relationship. It's romantic because it just is. Didn't you see the kissing? Romantic.

No, The 100 at its core is not about relationships, romantic and otherwise. But stack the number of fans invested exclusively by the action against those of us appreciating a strong plot but are emotionally attached to the characters and dynamics. Who do we think wins? Jason can cry all he wants over an audience refusing to be dazzled solely by his flashy sci-fi.

Funnily enough, "not about relationships'' is only ever applied to Bellarke. Bellarke, a relationship so consistently significant, it's the central dynamic of the show. The backbone on which the story is predicated. Only with Bellarke does it become super imperative to represent male-female platonic relationships. As if Bellarke is the end all, be all of platonic friendship representation on this show. In every single television show in the history of television shows.

Where was this advocacy when B/echo was foisted upon on us after one scene between them where he didn't outright hate Echo? When one interaction before that, he nearly choked the life out of her. If male-female friendship on TV is so sparse, why didn't B/ravens celebrate the familial relationship between Bellamy and Raven? Isn't the fact that they interpret Clarke as abusive to Bellamy all the more reason to praise his oh-so-healthy friendship with Raven as friendship? They might be the one group of shippers at the least liberty to use this argument against Bellarke, lest they want to hear the cacophony of our fandom's laughter at the sheer hypocrisy of the joke. Instead, they've held on with an iron grip to the one sex scene from practically three lifetimes ago when the characters were distracting themselves from their feelings on OTHER people? They've recalled this as "proof" of romance while silent on (or misconstruing) the 99% of narrative wherein they were platonic and the 100% of the time they were canonically non-romantic.

Bellarke is only non-romantic if you believe love stories are told in the space of time it takes for Characters A & B to make out and screw each other onscreen, a timespan amounting to less than the intermission of a quick bathroom break. If it sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. And yet, some can't wrap their heads around the idea that maybe, just maybe, a well-written love story in its entirety is denoted by more than two insubstantial markers and unreliable qualifiers. B/raven had sex, and the deed didn't fashion them into a romance. Jasper and Maya kissed but didn't have sex. Were they half a romantic relationship? Bellarke is paralleled to romantic couples all the time, but it counts for nothing in the eyes of their rival-ship fandom adversaries. Take ship wars out of it by considering Mackson. Like B/echo, the show informed us that Mackson became a couple post-Praimfaya, offscreen, via a kiss. Does anyone fancy them an epic love story with their whisper of a buildup? Since a kiss is all it takes, as dictated by fandom parameters, we should.

If Characters A & B are ensconced in a romantic storyline, then by definition, their relationship is neither non-romantic nor fanon. "Platonic" rings hollow as a descriptor for feelings canonically not so.

If the rest of the fandom doesn't want to take our word for granted, Bob confirmed Bellarke as romantic. Is he as delusional as we are? Bob is not a shipper, but he knows what he was told to perform and how. Why do the pineapples twist themselves in knots to discredit his word? If they are so assured by Jason's word-of-god affirmation, then what credibility does it bear to have Bellarke validated by someone other than the one in charge? They're so quick to aggressively repudiate any statement less than "CL is everything. Nothing else exists. CL is the only fictional love story in The 100, nay, the WORLD. CL is the single greatest man-made invention since the advent of the wheel."

We've all seen a show with a romantic relationship between the leads at the core of the story. We all know the definition of slowburn. We can pinpoint the tropes used to convey romantic feelings. We know conflict is how stories are told. We know when interferences are meant to separate them. We know when obstacles are overcome, they're stronger for it. We know that's why the hurdles exist. We know those impediments often take the shape of interim, third-party love interests. We know what love triangles are. We know pining and longing.

Jason wasn't revolutionary in his structure of Bellarke. He wasn't sly. Jason modeled them no differently than most other shows do with their main romances. Subtler and slower, sure. Sometimes not subtle at all. There's no subtlety in having Clarke viscerally react to multiple shots of Bellamy with his girlfriend. No subtlety in him prioritizing her life over the others in Sanctum's clutches. In her prioritizing his life above all the other lives she was sure would perish if he opened the bunker door. There is no subtlety in Bellamy poisoning his sister to stave off Clarke's impending execution. In her relinquishing 50 Arkadian lives for him after it killed her to choose only 100 to preserve. In her sending the daughter Clarke was hellbent to protect, into the trenches to save him. In him marching across enemy lines to rescue her. In her surrender to her kidnapper to march to potential death, to prevent Bellamy's immediate one. No subtlety in Josie's callouts. No subtlety in Lxa's successful use of his name to convince Clarke to let a bomb drop on an unsuspecting village. Bet every dollar you have that the list goes on and on.

There are a lot of layers to what this show was. It was a tragedy, with hope for light at the end of the tunnel. It was, first and foremost, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival drama. Within this overarch is the story of how the union of Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake saves humanity, ushering in an age of peace. In this regard, their relationship transcended romance. But with the two of them growing exponentially more intimate each season, pulled apart by obstacles only to draw closer once again, theirs was a love story. A romantic opus, the crescendo timed in such a way that the resolution of this storyline -the moment they get together- would align with the resolution of the main plot. Tying Bellarke to the completion of this tale made them more meaningful than any other relationship on this show, not less.

Whereas the trend with every other pair was to chronicle whether they survived this hostile world intact or succumbed to it, Bellarke was a slowburn. A unique appellation for the couples on this show, but not disqualifying them from romantic acknowledgment.

Framing Bellarke in this manner was 100% Jason's choice. If he wanted the audience to treat them as platonic, he should have made it clear within the narrative itself, not through vague, word-of-god dispatches. A mishandled 180-degree swerve at the clutch as a consequence of extra-textual factors doesn't negate the 84% of the story prior. It's just bad writing to not follow through. And Jason's poor, nearsighted decisions ruined a hell of a lot more than a Bellarke endgame.

The problem is, when Bellarke is legitimized, the pineapples are yanked out of their fantasies where they get to pretend the quoted exaggerations above are real. Here I'm embellishing, but some of them have deeply ingrained their identities in CL to the degree where hyperbole is rechristened to incontestable facts. An endorsement for Bellarke is an obtrusive reminder of the not all-encompassing reception of their ship. A lack of positive sentiment is an attack on their OTP, elevated to an attack on their identity. Before long, it ascends to an alleged offense to their right to exist. The perpetrators of this evil against humanity are the enemy, and they must attack in kind, in defense of themselves.

Truthfully, I think it's sad, the connotation of human happiness wholly dependent on the outcome of a fictional liaison already terminated years ago. I'm not unaware of the marginalization of minorities, of the LGBT+ community, in media. I haven't buried my head in the sand to pretend there aren't horrible crimes committed against them. I don't pretend prejudice isn't rampant. When defense and education devolve into hatred and libel for asinine reasons, though, the line has been crossed. You don't get a free pass to hurt someone with your words over a damn ship war. No matter how hard you try to dress it up as righteous social justice, I assure you, you're woefully transparent.

[presumenothing]

first: do no harm

(AO3)

Dr. Mensah’s attention zeroed in on me like a well-tuned surgery bot arm. “You have medical training.”

I was going to deny the hell out of that. I really was.

And then I said: “Not recently,” instead of no or even more accurately I frankly don’t think the company’s education modules count as training by your standards. (As far as I was concerned, the only thing worse than those modules was the one on breaking bad news, but what did I know. Maybe humans actually felt comforted by those tactics they described.) (No, I didn’t think that was likely, either.)

Which reminded me of a necessary addition. “The company won’t cover liabilities related to any non-security tasks you assign me to, if that’s what you’re intending.”

Mensah made a sound that was both grim and viciously annoyed at once, which I immediately saved for further analysis and replication. “Then we’ll just have to not make any mistakes, won’t we?”

–

I hadn’t exactly been thrilled with getting assigned to this mission. Not that mining installations were much of a walk in the park, but this was just asking to turn up memories that were better off buried (preferably forever) in my organic parts.

I don’t usually pay attention to mission briefs, as you may have noticed, and I wouldn’t have this time either except that my half-assed scan turned up the fact that the team weren’t science-doctors on a survey like I’d initially assumed, but medical-doctors. On a medical mission.

Of course they were.

(I wanted to say that someone had allocated me to this on purpose, but realistically speaking the company didn’t give enough of a shit, and the universe disliked me enough that this could totally be pure chance.)

Considering all that, the mission so far had been… much less worse than it could’ve been. Though the bar for that was admittedly very, very low. Possibly somewhere in the negatives.

Anyway. Up until the whole thing with Bharadwaj and Volescu getting almost-but-not-eaten, the task of making sure no one died had mostly been the clients’ job for once, which was a nice change since they were actually competent at it.

I still didn’t care enough to read their background info, but it was pretty clear just from observing that these doctors had experience with working in less-than-great conditions, even if Ratthi did sometimes sigh wistfully about equipment they couldn’t have in field hospitals. It meant that my job had pretty much amounted to patrolling, lurking visibly around the supplies storage in case anyone got ideas about that, and helping to fetch various medical items when I happened to be there and it wasn’t Gurathin asking.

It wasn’t terrible. I’d even got some media-watching time in.

(There might have been the vague thought that things could’ve gone much better if I’d been deployed with a team like this instead of Corporation Rim fuckery that literally bled payment from patients, but part of the reason medical-use constructs had been developed in the first place was so that hospitals could draw up forty-hour shifts and other assorted fun without worrying about doctor and surgeon unions, which told you everything you needed to know about our existence.

Also, the thought was inherently depressing and I already had enough of that in my head, thank you very much.)

The contract was more than halfway through. All I had needed to do to avoid awkward questions was continue making sure no one noticed that I was weirdly well-versed in all this, which wasn’t difficult since they only seemed to have theoretical knowledge about SecUnits at best.

Then the fauna happened, and poof went my cover.

Now all of PresAux knew I was – whatever the hell you called a catastrophically failed MedUnit who got turned loose onto security, because at least if I screwed up here the press wouldn’t be as bad. And that wasn’t even getting into the hacked governor module.

Even constructs didn’t have a term for all that.

–

Of course, none of that stopped this from being a Very Bad Idea. Even if apparently no one except Gurathin (ugh) seemed to agree.

“I’m a SecUnit, Dr. Mensah. I scare people. Patients are harder to assess when they’re running away.” I thought basic logistics might work here.

“You had better bedside manner with Bharadwaj and Volescu than many doctors I’ve seen. Human ones, might I add, and not actively injured themselves at the time.” Mensah’s tone was brisk as her pace – which wasn’t difficult to keep up with either, given my vertical advantage, but impressive nonetheless. “And no one wants to be around Pin-Lee when she’s holding a scalpel. That’s what the sedation is for.”

It’s because SecUnit hasn’t seen her in court yet. Trust me, it’s much scarier, Ratthi chimed in over the feed, with the text signifier for “amusement” but not “joke”.

Pin-Lee just smiled.

It was terrifying. I wasn’t even looking directly at her.

“I don’t have a valid license.” That’d been a part of the legal fallout from the disaster on RaviHyral, though no one had actually bothered with adding malpractice charges or barring me from ever doing medicine again. (Just another side effect of being considered as equipment – I doubted the company would’ve even secured licenses for constructs if not for their paranoia about covering their asses on all fronts.)

But it was a last resort argument, and I knew it.

Mensah knew it, too. “There’s special dispensations for that, especially under the current circumstances, as long as a fully-licensed doctor is in the vicinity at all times. It’s not like any of us can actually get out of each other’s hair in this base anyway.”

Mensah had stopped in a less-chaotic corner and turned to me, not that she could see anything behind the faceplate. I fixed my gaze a generous distance to the left and let my drones do the looking.

“I’m not going to make you agree. You perform a valuable function as our security – far more than I had initially expected, to be honest, and we would all be grateful if you kept doing that. But with Bharadwaj down for the count and Volescu still recovering, we could do with the help.” Her expression was still steady as ever, even though she probably knew better than I did the risks of continuing to operate shorthanded like this. “It’s your decision, SecUnit.”

Right, just the very thing I didn’t need to hear.

I kept most of my sigh internal. “Triage and first-aid only, between patrols. No procedures, and I won’t be responsible if any patients freak out.”

Mensah nodded. “Of course. Gurathin’s on receiving duty today, how about you work out a roster with him?”

I knew it. This was a bad idea.

–––––

You’d be my guardian.

Yes. The education opportunities – most of us were trained on Preservation, if you’re interested in learning and getting your license properly this time. Or not. You can do anything you want.

–––––

ART barged its way into my feed. You’re exhibiting a mildly elevated temperature and respiration rate. Though it could of course merely be a sign of inferior processors rather than emotional distress.

Do you talk to your clients like that?

Do you? ART retorted right back, but obligingly brought up the documentation for its MedSystem before I finished the query for it.

I ignored ART’s attention (with some difficulty) as I flicked quickly through the top few files, taking in the glaring disparities from my existing data. The notable lack of suggesting costly procedures that no-one actually needed, for starters. I’m assuming some of these are your improvements on standard procedure?

I am the cutting edge of medical research, ART proclaimed. You couldn’t accuse it of humility if you tried.

I still wasn’t sure what I wanted, and I still didn’t want anyone to decide it for me. But moving towards the one thing I did want (at least in the short term) had ended up with me running into what was very possibly the most advanced and opinionated diagnosis-treatment AI currently in existence, because that was just the kind of luck I had.

I didn’t have a medium-duty surgical suite in my arms anymore, since that was the entire point of modular Unit construction, but neither did Mensah.

And I didn’t think I wanted to stop doing security, anyway, since it turned out I might not be completely terrible at it; having actual medical knowledge that was MedSystem-malfunction-proof couldn’t hurt.

Plus, overwriting those shitty education modules seemed like a pretty great fuck-you to the company. I was always interested in that.

I tagged some of the more emergency-related files, then added a bunch of the weirder injuries I’d seen on contracts, and prodded ART. Tell me about these?

[captaingondolin]

(Rexwalker + Anidala polyam they know about each other and are chill. i wrote this while ignoring a mile long list of to dos. i am made of stress and denial so i am giving these characters time to relax.)

The air inside 79s was always too hot, subpar air filters never quite keeping up with the mass of bodies confined into the small space. If it was warm enough, people would spill out onto the balcony, the low beats of the music reaching even outside.

Rex had stopped noticing the smell of spilled liquor and sweat after less than ten minutes inside. The heat, however, was starting to get to him. But maybe that was just Anakin plastered against his side.

There had been a few curious glances in their direction, natborn officers and Jetii being uncommon sights at 79s, but Anakin was with him and no one questioned them. Jesse had winked at him from the table he shared with Kix, before going back to his own drink.

Anakin’s hair was tickling his neck, and Rex looked down at where his riduur was slumped against his shoulder.

“I might have had one too many,” Anakin admitted, lifting his empty glass and giving a half shrug, somehow without dislodging himself from Rex’s shoulder. “Everything is spinning and I think I’m hearing more of people’s thoughts than I should.”

Rex knew that no Jedi, not even Anakin could read thoughts piecemeal, like a written text or an overheard conversation. But Anakin was highly sensitive to feelings, attuned to perceiving changing moods or absorbing strong images or sensations people might be projecting, and he knew Rex would understand his shorthand. When he was tired or, like in this case, drunk, filtering out the noise of the world became harder.

“Let’s get you home, then,” Rex said. 

He might have hoped for a longer night, but they were coming from a long, thankless, bloody campaign, and he understood better than most the temptation of numbing it all down. Anakin had had to carry him back to the barracks a few times before, and her was more than happy to return the favour.

“Do you...” Anakin started, then mumbled something inaudible.

Rex gave him time to collect his thoughts.

“You know I love you, right?” he said after a moment, pushing himself upright to look Rex in the eye.

“Should I be worried?” Rex joked, ignoring the flutter of joy he always, always felt at those words.

Anakin pouted, and Rex couldn’t help but kiss that insufferable, beautiful pout.

“Do you, I mean, would you. Do you want to come to Padmé’s? I really miss her, but I don’t want to be without you.”

Rex hesitated. He hadn’t spent that much time with the Senator. They had a near-death experience together with the blue shadow virus, which had led to awkward confessions and a renewed mutual respect, but that was the extent. Despite sharing something incredibly important and precious, they weren’t exactly close. Rex didn’t know exactly how she felt, but he often feared overstepping, and he made a conscious effort not to monopolise Anakin’s time when they were on leave. 

“Are you sure she’d be okay with this?” Rex wasn’t sure if he meant the late hour, the last minute call, or his own presence in her house.

Colour rose even more on Anakin’s cheeks. “She said... she offered. She wasn’t sure you wanted to and didn’t want to pressure you, but... And I felt so awkward! I love you both so much, but I don’t know if...” he made a vague gesture that added absolutely nothing to his babbling, but somehow, Rex understood him.

It was, in a way, like inviting Anakin to 79s. Rex loved his brothers, and he wanted Anakin to spend time with him in one of the places where he got to be himself. But there was friction. Anakin wasn’t exactly part of that world, much like Rex wasn’t part of Amidala’s. He worried for a moment about what they were going to do after the war - if they both... No, he wasn’t going to go there.

“Let’s give her a call and see if she wants to deal with your drunk ass, or I’m dropping you on Kenobi’s doorstep and washing my hands of you,” Rex said, a little more gruffly than he intended. But Anakin was smiling at him like he hung the moon and stars.

They walked - more like wobbled - outside and found a corner where they wouldn’t be overheard to make the call. 

“Ani!” Padmé said with a bright smile that made her look so young. Or maybe just like herself, instead of the ageless effigy she presented to the world.

Her smile didn’t dim when she saw Rex, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Captain. Is Anakin being a nuisance?”

“Hey, I resent that! I am a kriffing delight to be around!”

Padmé and Rex laughed at him, but fondly and without malice, and Anakin sighed, tragic and put upon.

“Once you two have finished laughing at me... Padmé, would you... can we...”

She came to his rescue. “Would you like to come over? Both of you?”

-

Padmé is waiting for them at the door - Rex notices not even her protocol droid is around, and appreciates the discretion. He’s sure there must be at least one guard somewhere on this floor, but they are alone in the apartment.

Anakin bends down to kiss Padmé. He’s tall, and he needs to angle down to kiss Rex too, but Padmé is surprisingly tiny up close. She has such a large presence, it’s easier to forget her actual height. Rex wonders idly how it feels, to be so visible and yet so invisible.

He can see her lips curl up, smiling into the kiss, her eyes blissfully close. Anakin tangles a hand into her hair, cascading freely down her back, unconstrained by headpieces or jewels, and Rex realises the level of trust she is showcasing by receiving him like this - not as Senator Amidala, but just Padmé, without her own form of armour and armour-paints.

“Come on,” she says after a moment, lips red and well-kissed, and takes them to the living room. 

They all sit on a large sofa, Anakin between them looking pleased and a little nervous. Rex can relate.

Padmé offers them drinks and asks about their plans for their leave. She does not ask about the fighting, the campaign they just left behind. She does not ask about where they will be assigned next. Their conversation stays in the small confines of a few days of dirtside leave, and it’s surprisingly comforting. Rex tries to imagine them into a bubble, the galaxy outside nothing but a muted memory.

“You with us, Rex?” Anakin asks him.

He is still staring into his glass of muja juice. “Mh?”

Then he realises the other two had stopped talking and raises his eyes. “Sorry. I was just thinking... It’s nothing.”

It’s stupid, he thinks. The bubble bursts, the outside world filters back in. It’s all well and good to enjoy leave, but this it all this is: a moment respite, a parenthesis in a history of war. Rex knows no other life and maybe he never will.

Anakin takes his hand and just holds it, waiting in silence. Padmé peers over at him, frowning. “Would you like to talk,” she asks, “Or to be left alone? Or do you want to talk just with Anakin?”

She disentangles herself from Anakin and is about to stand up, when Rex stops her. “No, no. I’m not about to... this is your house. I’m not going to kick you out from your own living room. Maybe I should go.”

Anakin’s fingers tighten around his, but before he can say a word, Padmé is standing in front of him. “Rex. I like to think we will be friends, one day, but I can’t presume to know you yet, and I have no right to your every thought. Please. Let me give you some space.”

There is vice around Rex’s throat and he can only nod. He watches her go, her ridiculously long, impractical blue robe trailing after her, and he almost calls her back. He wants her to know how he feels.

But he isn’t sure she would understand, and he isn’t ready to risk it yet. So he spills his heart to Anakin, who is ready to receive it all. Anakin always promises him they will both see the end of the war, and sometimes Rex gets angry at him for that. Anakin isn’t babying him, he truly believes that, but Rex can’t always accept the weight of that hope. Tonight, though, he leans with his forehead against Anakin’s chest, and lets him caress his head, his back, and talk promises of peace.

“I will keep you safe. I will keep you all safe,” Anakin promises, bright and impossible, and Rex believes him.

Padmé comes back after a while with hot chocolate and cookies. They eat and drink and Padmé gets a cream moustache and does a frighteningly accurate imitation of Admiral Yularen that makes Anakin laugh until there are tears in his eyes. Rex, who is maybe still a little bit tipsy, does Obi-Wan. Padmé is gasping for air and accusing him of having a recording of Master Kenobi hidden somewhere.

“I’ve just been present for many of General Kenobi’s lectures. Somehow,” he side eyes Anakin, “Someone always ends up prompting them.”

“I am a victim!” Anakin says, and keep laughing.

It gets late enough that the conversation slows down and they are all yawning more than they are talking, and Rex thinks it’s time to go.

“You should stay, Rex. Stay for breakfast. Mon brought me a giant box of chandrillan spiced chocolate pastries that I will never be able to finish on my own. Unless of course you’ll be needed too early tomorrow?”

Rex can see through the flimsi thin excuse, and he appreciates the easy way out. Which he should take. He should go and leave Anakin alone with his wife. He should go back to the barracks in case he was needed. Should, should, should.

“I would love to,” his traitorous voice says, lower and more uncertain than he has ever sounded. “Stay, I mean.”

“I’ll go find some spare sleeping clothes,” Anakin offers helpfully, then winks - winks! the shameless flirt - at him, “I’m sure you won’t mind.”

Padmé looks between them, the faintest pink colouring her cheeks. “I’ll show you to the guest room,” she says, standing up and beckoning him to follow.

The guestroom is, as expected, far bigger than necessary and with its own attached fresher. 

When Anakin fails to come back, Padmé goes in search of him. Rex hears a faint laughter, and Padmé reappears with some folded clothes. “He passed out face down on the bed.”

She hands him the clothes and her small, soft hand touches his. He smiles at her and wishes her goodnight.

And it is. For tonight, still, they are at peace.

[comradekatara]

Hey I'm new to your blog and I love it!! I'm just confused though... Who exactly do you ship from atla? I've been looking through your posts off and on today and there are some posts for example where it seems like you do like kataang and then older posts make it seem like you don't? Also I have no clue what Litara is?? Thanks 😊

so i have mixed feelings on katara/aang. i know there are people who dislike it because katara is like “a mom” to aang, but that simply isn’t true. they are both kids, and that’s the reason why they’re initially drawn to each other (see: going penguin sledding). to say that katara treats aang like a son is some bullshit, and a fundamental misinterpretation of katara’s character. they are the most important person in each other’s lives, and they are best friends. what i dislike about the way their dynamic is portrayed, though, is the episodes which explore their romance (not all of them! just some of them). these episodes feel cliched and tired, employing lazy shorthand to indicate that they’re “meant for each other.” 

romance was never one of atla’s strongsuits. i would even go as far as to say it’s their weakest link, writing-wise. in a show that otherwise excels in writing three-dimensional characters, where romance is concerned, the writing falls flat. i think sokka and suki work really well together, but even then, suki obviously isn’t explored to the same degree as the rest of the gaang. i love sokka and yue’s tragic romance (because even i can be a little bitchbaby sometimes), but their buildup is definitely underdeveloped. mai and zuko getting back together at the end of the show is completely nonsensical, because zuko has done nothing to prove that he won’t continue to be a shitty boyfriend to mai, and mai deserves better. (and don’t even get me started on that lok love triangle.) 

we talk a lot about how atla (and lok!!!) is a show created by two whites, and the intense insensitivity of its portrayal of the tibetan genocide, the way in which its lore draws so heavily on hindu theology & philosophy and yet their one south asian character is a caricature, the way sandbenders are a racist caricature of mena ppl, using the name lake laogai, mispronouncing/misspelling asian names, i could go on... but i just remembered that’s not the point of this post. lmao. anyway. atla is also a show created by two men. and while i genuinely believe that katara is one of, if not the best, teenage girl characters ever portrayed on tv, there are definite flaws, as well as assumptions made, where romance is concerned. 

for example, the fact that people thought katara was in a “love triangle” with aang and zuko is absurd. i mean, i can see why people thought that. i’ve read the powerpoints about why zuko and katara should have “ended up together” because they’re like romeo & juliet or whatever (you know, how romeo terrorized juliet for most of the play and juliet hated him? we all remember that, right??), and i get why there’s an appeal. but it’s not a love triangle, because zuko was never a contender. but people still wanted to treat katara as if she was a prize to be won, and let the best man win. which is deeply sexist, plain n simple. 

audiences are romance-obsessed due to society & the media’s constant insistence that romance is the only way for a woman to find personal fulfillment (watch crazy ex girlfriend all seasons streaming now on netflix). i reject the idea that katara had to “end up” with someone by the end of the show, and not only “end up,” but “stay with together forever, marry, and have three kids with.” katara is fourteen. aang is twelve. yes they have crushes on each other, and love each other deeply, but they are kids. romance isn’t necessary. 

the love katara and aang have for each other is a fundamental pillar of the show, and their love for each other is deep and poignant. up until the moment lazy shorthand is employed to indicate that their feelings are romantic. they’re still cute, but these moments are cliched as all hell, and the thing about romance cliches is that romantic cliches promote sexism. whoops! 

the original character of li (invented by me, chell, julie klausner, and inspired by my friend’s ex-boyfriend who is the most amenable and polite man i have probably ever met) is, in essence, a thought experiment in which we provide katara the perfect man whose entire life revolves around happily attending to her needs. if she wants to spend all her time in the south pole because that is where her family and her tribe is and also she is chief which is kind of a hands-on job, actually, he will gladly move there for her. one of his side hobbies is that he is a masterclass chef, and so he cooks every meal for her. whenever katara has to deal with a bunch of particularly stubborn idiots that day, he just sits there and listens to her rant, never interjecting with his own opinions. his baggage never gets in the way of her baggage, because he is his therapist’s best patient. it’s heterosexual rights! 

at risk of explaining the joke, basically, he is what bryke (and gene yang–ugh) think katara would be for aang......which obviously isn’t in line with what aang as a character would want for katara, but she was never confirmed to be the chief of the swt either, and that’s fucked up! katara is a character with so much agency, but to make her the love interest for the protagonist, regardless of how wonderful said protagonist is, and how much he adores and supports her (which, to be clear, he absolutely does!), strips her of some of that agency by virtue of being a female character written by men. i love katara and aang, and i love the love they have for each other. but ideally, to me at least, the show would have ended on their hug, not their kiss. a romance between them can be implied, but it would have been more open-ended. because romance isn’t necessary, not when you’re in middle school, and frankly, not ever.