010: Pacific Rim, or: how to have a perfectly amazing story about two people THAT'S NOT A LOVE STORY

[useyourlove]

Once upon a time, I used to track various tags on Tumblr related to the TV show Elementary. In those tags, I saw various fans being upset that everyone was celebrating the way the creators said "they won't" in regards to the "will they or won't they" (bang like rabbits) question that media and culture tries to project onto a show about a man and a

Comments

[useyourlove]

SAME!!!!! AAH SAME!! And I feel sort of rude being like "I'M SO SICK OF PEOPLE SHIPPING THINGS" but like... idk, it's just that I really did love that there was no romance. And that there were all these places where they could've turned it into romance, and even the closest they came was Raleigh saying "I never had the greatest timing."

And I also feel like, somehow, in most stories that are explicitly "love stories" they just sort of skip the respect and trust parts of relationships and go straight to this sort of othered state-of-being. Like "this is being in love" and "this is not being in love" and somehow there's supposed to be this like ~magic switch that gets flipped. When really the people I love the most are the people I trust and respect the most, and the people in my life that I thought I've been "in-love" with are like just infatuations based on fantasies I made up.

Which is also why I think the entire concept of "the friendzone" is so utterly fucking ridiculous. I'm more inclined to "fall in love" with a really good friend of mine than I am to "fall in love" with some random asshole who decides to hit on me and try and cultivate me for sex. Like, the entire idea of it is absurd because it somehow demonizes a necessary state in the relationship progression which I just find hilarious and deliciously self-sabotaging to anyone who believes such a thing as "the friendzone" exists. (Beside the Pacific Rim point, but I've been thinking about it lately.)

Anyway, yeeeees. Pacific Rim and it's lack of romance while still having very deep, meaningful relationships is very near and dear to my heart. She didn't kiss him and I literally fist-pumped and it just sealed the deal entirely.