VickDihHa

Hello friends, it's me, Ahmed again. I need your help. I almost lost my life last time while looking for work because the place was directly bombed. I'm a university student about to graduate. I lost everything in the war, and I support myself, my younger brother, and my family. I tried to find work, but to no avail. I'm looking for a scholarship to continue my studies. We've been deprived of all our rights. Please don't deprive me of my most basic rights: the right to education, to live, and to eat healthy, good food. I'm searching for a way to support myself. You may not be able to provide financial support, but you can share this. Let's not be a cause of destruction. Please try to support us in any way you can.

My tent is dilapidated and tattered, unfit for human habitation, and extremely hot. I need your help and support.

My name is Bilal. I am a 35-year-old father of four children 👨‍👧‍👦 from Gaza. I lived a simple life with my family. I worked hard every day to provide my children with a decent life and a better future.

But the war took everything from us… 💔

In a sudden bombing, my home was destroyed, and the place that once brought my family together became nothing but ruins. I lost several members of my family, and I, my wife, and my daughter were injured, leaving us with deep physical and emotional suffering.

After losing my home, my job, and my only source of income, I became unable to work because of my injuries. My responsibilities became greater than my ability to provide. Today, I live with my children in a small, worn-out tent ⛺ that does not protect us from the heat of the sun ☀️, the cold of winter ❄️, insects 🐜, or rats 🐭 that have become part of our daily struggle.

Even the little food we manage to get 🍞 does not remain safe for us, as the rats eat it, and my children cannot eat it afterward. We are living in extremely difficult conditions, trying only to survive through fear and hardship 💔.

The tent where we live is located near the yellow line, and we have nowhere else to go or a safe place to shelter. It breaks my heart to see my children suffering while I cannot provide what they need 😢.

I ask kind-hearted people ❤️ to stand with me and help us provide medical treatment for my wife and daughter 🏥, secure the basic needs for my children, and help us overcome these unbearable circumstances after losing everything.

Please donate whatever you can to help us and stand by us during this difficult time 🙏. Your support can give my family new hope and help my children have a safer and more dignified life 🤍.

Please share our story with anyone who may be able to help 🤲.

Thank you to everyone who extends a helping hand and feels our pain ❤️.

Vetted by association I’m ayoosha-stuff friends

Hello friends, I am Yasmin from northern Gaza Strip. I am 27 years old, a mother of two children, Sila and Youssef, and I have been married for more than 7 years.

I was studying Journalism and Media at the University College, and I had both a home and a job. But because of the war, I lost my home, my work, and everything I owned.

My family’s house was also destroyed, and now we have nothing left except a worn-out tent whose torn walls cannot protect us from the heat of summer or the cold of winter.

My husband is injured. He was involved in a traffic accident while trying to get aid, and he is now disabled and unable to work.

My children have suffered from malnutrition due to the lack of food and proper nutrition.

That is why I am only asking for your help and support. I am here trying to save what is left of my children’s lives. They are between life and death.

Please, try to support us and donate whatever you can.

Listen, I don’t want to bring hate to this creator. I came into this video very early today, and I have watched it a few times today in its entirety. I wanted to approach it with an intent of analyzing this perspective while also reserving myself the right to disagree with it. Sadly, how this ship is perceived will always be part of how we analyze it.

Now, after watching the video itself, I find their analysis of the characters a little bit simplistic and sometimes willfully dismissive. This video essay tries to offer The Pitt and The Bear as key examples of when shipping ‘blinds people’ into expecting things that were never intended to be a part of a show or the context of a relationship between characters.

If this creator just said something along the lines of "I love their friendship, and I'm happy this show centered on a friendship," or 'sometimes we let ourselves be carried away by our expectations," I would not be writing this. I also understand that I'm very biased about the ship, and that is precious to me.

And I honestly don't care if this creator doesn't find a romantic Sydcarmy relationship appealing; there are plenty of personal reasons not to ship any given ship. And most of the time, I would say that I don’t have a problem with the people who didn’t want Sydcarmy together romantically if I didn’t know that romantic pairings (or ships) are a reflection of society's inner issues (and people’s personal perceptions of body, race, and gender) about who should be romantically involved with whom. This creator has a section in their video dedicated to the racism and misogyny that have fueled the media reaction to this ship, as well as their experience being a black woman in fandom spaces.

Their main opinion is that Sydney and Carmen are indeed incompatible, and they shouldn't be together, despite fans' hopes that the show will challenge these racist tropes.

And again, if they managed to give a justification for this take that was established on the show itself, I would have no problem with their take; it's just that, in my opinion, they didn't find any.

Now, this particular video reflects one of the opinions that I definitely assumed people were gonna have about the whole SydCarmen vs ClaireCarmy thing after the end of season 5: that Claire was a blanket love interest that was supposed to represent Carmen’s capacity to have a life outside the kitchen, while Sydney and Carmen’s friendship is the true core of the show, but that romance definitely was never in the cards for them. The video goes on about how it is always expected that het female and male leads will end together romantically. And this expectation is what "blinded' people to how (apparently) incompatible Carmen and Sydney are.

Yet I still think this creator managed to prove themselves wrong in their own thesis, if anything, and, quite ironically, because it seems like their predisposition toward the Bear and the Sydcarmy dynamic influenced how they interpreted the show. Apologies in advance if I’m about to or already sound really condescending.

For starters, this creator is honest enough to say upfront that they were never interested in Carmen and Sydney being romantically involved. And I just find it very ironic that they would go as far as saying people who wanted them together were projecting their own desires into a piece of media, when one of the arguments the creator imposed was

“My biggest reason (for not wanting them together) is that if a man irritated me as much as Carmen irritated Sydney as a friend and a partner, he would absolutely pissed me off as a romantic partner’ 🙄😒 Okay darling, good.

I don't even think they managed to give one reason why they are incompatible. They just pressed about all the conflict in the relationship, and that's not necessarily the same thing. The whole point is that each season they manage to find common ground and move forward together.

I also didn't like much of the context surrounding Sydcarmy in the early seasons. The "baby trapping her with a restaurant," Carmen's aggression, and his antics, the 'love triangle'. These elements have been long discussed in this fandom as things we wanted addressed and properly corrected. And we asked ourselves if it would be corrected.

Much of season 5 seemed to be dedicated to "fix' this, cause we all wanted to see Carmen prove himself worthy of pushing his issues behind him and be present for Syd emotionally, to put her well-being as a priority after she had to put up with his immaturity while sustaining the Bear team on her own for so long. Yes, he was a source of stress to her, and sometimes he antagonized her desire to help, and we will continue to analyze what they show inteded to do with Sydneys feelings and their particular dyanamic, but the creator of this video put that negative perception above the evidence of Carmen actively seeking Sydney emotionally, and his desire to change for her, even if you were to argue he didn't change to a point where he was absolutely ready. You can argue nobody is completely healed before a relationship. MarcusxLuca, NatxPete, Richie and Jess are all example os that.

This is another instance of the ‘I ship Carmen with therapy’ or “Sydney deserved better’ camp. They also take the actors' word for it, quoting Ayo and Jeremy and the things they've been saying against the ship in the early seasons. As if that could ever be proof of anything; it would not be the first or last time that actors go against ships that are canon in the show. Funny enough, The Pitt is another example of it. Abbott Elementary did this too.

The creator continues. Referring to TJ, saying, ‘Oh, you have a crush,’ as, and I quote

‘There are so many meta moments when characters are talking about the ambiguity of the (sydcarmy) relationship’

Baby, no. The show was telling you that Syd does have a crush on Carmen. Lionel wrote that episode and said that TJ was telling the truth, since you like quoting actors this much. Both Ayo and Jeremy acted like they were attracted to each other; Molly acted like she was annoyed by Sydney's presence in Carmen's life. Even if you were to believe this "love triangle" was all baiting, it was there still. This was acted, filmed, and edited; it was there for a reason.

Regardless of whether you really believe Syd and Carmen would have been bad for each other or that her feelings were always supposed to be unrequited. The fact that she loved him romantically was a big piece of why she did the things that she did, both the good and the misguided. She continued to try to help him cause she loved him, and she wasn’t as blunt as she normally would be about how bad things were going if she didn’t feel emotionally exhausted and hurt because of their disconnection (particularly trought seasons 2 and 3).

It's true that the show had to go through the ‘hurdles’ of their dynamic. Carmy’s ego and desire to resolve things on his own (be a hero) were always gonna be in conflict with Sydney’s desire to prove herself worthy of being included and respected. They have a very similar wound, and they are both very reserved people who avoid both conflict and intimacy.

But here is the thing: since it was established that Syd had feelings for Carm, and that Carmy likely was attracted to her too (both things that this creator failed to notice), a logical conclusion to make about their relationship is that it was precisely this attraction that compelled them to keep looking for each other. They are terrified of relying on each other, but seeing that as only a platonic lesson is actively being obtuse. SydCarmy is a representation of how difficult it is to have a relationship with an addict or someone suffering from mental illness: there is triggering, there is pushing and lingering.

Now, this is the quote I really want to talk about:

‘Carmen would be a terrible boyfriend, it would ruin their work dynamic, and Sydney would never put herself in that situation’

Because I think that’s one of my biggest issues with this 'platonic is better for them" narrative: that in discarding Carmen's feelings for Syd and Syd's feelings for Carm, they ignore the capacity Carmen had to change because of these feelings. They are ignoring some key parts of their characters and their particular dynamic.

Let’s go in inverse order here for the sake of argument. I'm so piseed about these statements because, to me, they are so shitty just in sentiment, but I'm gonna try to remain objective.

Sydney would not put herself in that situation: wrong 😑 baby, she loved him, she wanted him. She was actively flirting with him in some instances, flipping her hair, teasing him, feeling embarrassed to be noticed in cute outfits. "Put herself in that situation" implies a relationship with Carmen would be bad for her, but more on that later. And she was in that situation already, kinda, the love triangle at least, and managed the thing with Claire with such grace that many of us would want to be as mature as she was. If she ever were to date him, it would not be at the cost of her self-respect, cause she has plenty to share.

It would ruin their work dynamic: wrong again; they were as in love as they ever were in season 5, and their dynamic held the restaurant together, and they held together through service. The key factor was trust and compromise. Or is it a coincidence that the season (5) where their dynamic is the best is also the season where Carmy is emotionally present for Syd and he stated that he trusted her completely? That she also realized she trusts him, and he is able to be a source of peace for her too?

Carmen would be a terrible boyfriend: wrong, wrong, you are actively ignoring that Carmen's biggest growth was around Sydney. Moreover, Carmy was not a bad boyfriend to Claire either. They had issues with intimate conversations cause he and Claire have some other underlying issues. But even if you were to play the “Carmen is not ready for a relationship’ card, it doesn’t mean that he would never be good in a relationship. I would go as far as to say that establishing them as good business partners and friends already works against your argument. Because that’s the entire base of shows like Bones and Castle. It's about establishing trust, respect, and a desire to protect and care for one another. It is the base of any relationship, even the romantic ones. And Carmen and Syd do have it; you could even say they had to have this first for a relationship between them to work. Things like ‘say more’ and ‘I like this’ were things that Carmen said that proved this. The base for their relationship was solid, and it was profound, after all they went through. It was a test for how devoted they could be to each other. Even if this is not an argument for why ‘they should be together,’ I think it is pretty biased to assume that it would be a bad relationship.

There is also this quote early in the analysis.

'Sydney would never want anything romantic with someone she works with, especially someone whose issues she was witness to"

Please, for the love of God, stop projecting. Syd loved Carmen romantically even with his issues. That's such a blatant piece of context; idk how the fuck you would miss it and say you care about her character in the same breath. That's all "Goodbye" is about: them declaring the reasons they love each other despite what they are going trought. Despite how they have hurt each other, they are still attracted to each other and manage to love each other better than anybody around them. As to whether Syd would want to date a chef, that's neither here nor there, but her culinary telepathy with Carmen is one of the reasons she opened up to him, and they are both attracted to each other's skills, so I really don't see how this would be a problem. You go as far as to say a kitchen is an "aromantic" place as part of your argument. Pleaseeeee.

More on that note. The show has established Sydney and Carmen as uniquely good at fulfilling each other’s need for security and intimacy. Their professional partnership is one way they showcase this capacity.

They speak each other's language in a way nobody else can. ‘She would not put herself in that situation’; as if Carmen was not uniquely capable of going through Sydney’s walls and insecurities with love and respect. If anything, cooking can be a piece of personal hell for both of them, and I have difficulty imagining that it was not to showcase that they could really bring the best of each other in the worst situations. I really don't see how them having romantic feelings would change that, but guess what, they did have them, and they still respected and cared for each other more than anything.

My final impression after watching the video a couple more times is that this creator has some biases (that's what I'm seeing), and they use that as a basis to assume things about the characters and what they should or would want in a romantic relationship, and it wasn't just about Sydcarmy.

One of the ships referenced in this video, in the "would/should stay platonic" category, is Mohanbott. According to this creator, "Mohan would never get involved with that (Abbott), especially with the stress in her professional life." Very similar to what she said about Sydney.

For those of you who don't watch The Pitt, Samira Mohan was a young resident who was shipped with Jack Abbott, a much older resident who more often acts as a mentor and a support figure to Mohan. Yet the creator of this video assumes that Mohan doesn't want a relationship with him and implies that doing so would end up badly for her. Again, it is perfectly fine not to care about the ship. I normally don't care that much for age gap relationships, but I love Mohabott. Just don't assume for the characters when the subtext is precisely telling you the opposite. Mohan wanted a relationship; that's part of her arc. She was overworking herself into isolation, yet Abbot was a source of emotional support for her.

I don't like the assumption that they could have stayed platonic. Again, I really don't want to dismiss the analysis, but they are dismissing the show's text itself. Jack Abbott did show he had feelings for her, and Samira seemed interested in him, even being shy around him. These relationships were set up regardless of whether they were gonna be confirmed or reversed in later seasons (particularly if Pitt has shown to dismiss the character arcs that involved poc, particularly in the last season).

Please watch the video if you want; let me know if I'm missing something here. If this creator doesn't like relationships with these various contexts, that's totally valid. I just don't see it as an argument for 'it should stay platonic,' particularly when they seem to be dismissing explicit romantic acting and writing present in these shows.