In My Way

streetqueenofmars:

So, I need to talk about why Worf and Jadzia Dax are one of the best couples in all of pop culture but to do that I need to lay the groundwork of explaining some trends that the writers of Deep Space 9 completely avoid.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but for me I find that popular culture has a crippling inability to write couples in stable relationships. It’s a problem not just in genre fiction but even into the broader culture. Whether it’s rom-coms, fantasy novels, sci-fi TV or superheroes movies you have writers who are very interested in a couple falling in love and trying to win each other but then seem to lose interest after think.

Think about this way, we’ve all seen plenty of movies where a couple spend the whole movie trying to get together and it ends with them together. But how many films have you seen where the main love interests are in an established steady relationship? Married? Engaged? Hell, have even been dating long term?? It’s rare, I can’t tell whether most writers are just more interested in couples getting together than staying together or if writers don’t think that audiences would be as interested in a stable couple navigating their relationship.

This is what leads to writers breaking up couples in shows or in movie sequels. They set up a couple, spend a lot of time getting them together, but then once they get them together they don’t know what to do with them so they either break them up through contrived means or they kill one of them.

As someone who’s been in a happy steady relationship for some time and is also a writer I can tell you first hand that this stems entirely from a lack of imagination. There are so many stories you can tell with couples in long term relationships that you can’t tell with couple trying to get together. Shrek 2, The Mummy Returns, the Thin Man films and a few other examples demonstrate all the narrative potential that it feels like most writers waste.

The relationship between Worf and Jadzia Dax feels like the best proof I’ve seen in a long long time. The writers of Deep Space 9 use the format of episodic television to truly flesh put their relationship. We see them start as friends, see them realize how much they have in common, see it get more serious, see them commit to getting married, get married and for half a glorious season we see them live as a married couple. We see them fight but navigate it, we see them balance professional responsibilities with their devotion to each other, we see them figure out what a future together looks like and we see their love never waver, but mature.

The best example of this is the season six episode ‘Change of Heart’. It’s not only one of the most romantic episodes of anything I’ve ever seen but it’s one of the most romantic things I’ve seen period. So much of the episode is just us spending time with the couple and letting their natural chemistry sparkle. So that when the plot stuff does happen you are INVESTED. And Worf’s whole bedside monologue where he talks about how he realized that if Jadzia was ever in danger he would put the Galaxy at risk to save her? I was IN TEARS!!!

It’s the kind of mature storytelling that I WISH we could see more of. Instead of contriving ways to break up your romantic couples to start them all over again it’s so much interesting to try and figure out what their lives together look like and what kinds of conflicts or stories are unique to couples that you can’t tell otherwise.

theancientpowerawoken:

eggbagelz:

Do you ever think abt the fact that the most important relationship Logan has in xmen [2000] is the familial one he has with rogue. Do u ever think about the fact that the emotional climax of the film involves him holding her body and crying bc he thinks he cant save her. Or are you normal

I still ship them.

enigma-the-mysterious:

Genie: You have three wishes

Aramis: I wish for Anne to always be happy

Genie: That’s a good wish

Genie: You still have 3 wishes, that one is on me

🥹

countessofbiscuit:

baddie:

You said it, Apocalypse.

Excalibur #6 by Tini Howard and Marcus To

(via hurtslikeyourmouth)