ainomica

Romance is a particular kind of icing on the cake and it's nice. But the cake? It is the connection that the characters share, the bond between them. I need love stories and all I end up stuck with from mainstream media is romance. The icing without the cake (*cough* Bton *cough*)

When I do get some proper stuff like Ellen x Orlok, I have to put up with ten essays on how this 'isn't love' but *insert* whatever term they've come up with. Like it isn't a romance but it is very much a love story. The romance genre might have its rules but a love story can be anywhere and in anything. And love can be messy, ugly and unconventional.

Something which annoys me about media discourse these days is that everyone wants to be an authority on love and decide what can be called love and what cannot even if the story states otherwise. A similar circus had occurred in the aftermath of EmFen's Wuthering Heights when instead of criticizing the movie where it deserved to be criticized, everyone was acting like its biggest crime was to call it a love story. Except Wuthering Heights is a love story. Always has been. It's just not a romance. It contains other themes too which should be but at its core is the doomed love that Heathcliff and Cathy have for each other is the crux of the tale. It would have been one thing to call Heathcliff the ideal love interest and 'book boyfriend' because he isn't that at all. But it is also true that what he specifically had with Catherine was love. It is so because thats what the author intended and the writing and narrative admits it too.

Oh man...I think as a Lit student I have to say its also kind of other way around...Romance is actually capable of being quite ugly and deep because its Romance the genre which gave people room to right and resurgence from the neo- classical rigidity in the first place. When Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Coleridge and Wordsworth, ESPECIALLY Coleridge-Wordsworth wrote the preface to Lyrical Ballad poem in 1798, The defined what would then be known as Romantic era by calling their style of writing/poetry

"Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions recollected in tranquility"

"They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure."

The subsequent writers in next generation kept on building on this belief for a century to come and that is from where we get our Gothic classics btw, including and not limited to Wuthering Heights, Christabel, Horace Walpole's works, etc. Its the modern writers who have stripped Love from Romanticism movement instead, with this idea that Romance is :pure:, "idealistic" free from all the folly, warts, and eccentricities of the human experience. Your crush is Limerence, Your one sided love is obsessive incelism regardless of what it is, Your love is just daddy/mommy issues.

This is why they try so hard to medicalize the issue of whether Heathcliff and Catherine are even truly lovers/in love if the things they are doing to each other is not "Healthy". They just reduce the complexity of their story to "its a story of toxicity and abuse" ( Ironically not at all having discourse over HEATHCLIFF'S RACIAL ABUSE at all at the hands of little Catherine, Linton and even Nelly the servant) and decontextualize it from the fact that it is a love story and its precisely because its a love story that its written that way. Emily Bronte wanted you to talk about how love is the only redeeming force these people had for each other because in life they have BOTH wronged each other very badly. To not respect and regard a human being with honor of marriage despite calling him your equal ( "whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same" is a RADICAL statement to make as a white English woman for a Romani man, who were called the devil, pagan, and damned because of their lifestyle and even religious allegiances) is one of the worst form of disrespect you can do ( and not to mention the beatings, and cruel pranks when she was a kid)

Nikki's monologue is actually a symptom of this misunderstanding of the older definition of what writers saw in Classic v/s Romantic writing of love in literature. Nikki wants to write what people would have thought is a Romantic love story because it expresses the raw, spontaneous emotions and experience of love and daily vagaries of life. What people think is "Love" is more Classical writing, completely rigid about understanding of what Love should look like on pages and even in life. Its ironically far closer to the understanding of what people think love is or could - medicalized, pathologized, shamed and censored when it doesn't fit a box ( and like every Classical and revival period its happening again when society is going through massive social and financial upheaval)

I think I understand why Barker cut the monologue- because it kind of gives Bear the clue he needed, the WAKE UP CALL, he is trying to run away from desperately to get his life together. If Nikki basically lays it out on like that and all Bear could think is how intelligent Nikki is and cannot see it applies TO HIM also, that would completely deflate the later horror of the situation where Bear kept embarrassing Willow!Nikki in public by almost maliciously telling everyone that she is the one acting strangely, he has no clue, triggering her anger points, instigating everything with Sarah. It would have read like Bear is a clueless dumbass since he is acting like it here as well.

The horror truely breathes well if we can infer Bear does know how his actions are hurting Nikki but he keeps at it anyway because his self preservation in people's eyes is more important. NOT NIKKI. This is why Willow!Bear doesn't look scared or kept on gagging after taking the medicine. We are supposed to see the difference between usual Bear and Willow!Bear, the latter who finally acts like he loves Nikki, as opposed to the real Bear who never did.

The reason, I think, Bear is the way he is and he made this wish after refusing to fess up because, it is his coping mechanism- to use the idea of Nikki being his lover as this balm that will heal his loneliness and messed up life. He never confesses to Nikki because he knows if he did that, she would make it clear that they can never be together, might as well READ HIM FOR FILTH and HE CANNOT HANDLE THAT ( like everything else in his life) . HE WOULD NOT handle that.

So he shuts up and immediately uses the one wish willow to calm his anxieties after being hair's breath away from his coping mechanism from getting destroyed by Nikki that night. ( like people say and even the actress said that perhaps Nikki thought for a second "this guy might treat me right" when she wanted Bear to be honest, but I think despite forcing herself to ask Bear, I cannot see Nikki tolerating him any more second than 1 week , she was so hostile when even asked him. She TRULY DOES NOT see him that way). That would mean when Nikki leaves, Bear would be TRULY alone to face the fact that a relationship with the coolest girl he knows won't make him happy. That option is Done.

EDIT: LMAOOOOOOO imagine using Jung as a tool to make the most Un Jungian statement

And when she talked to Bear about "if you have a crush on me, now is the time to tell me" was her way to make Bear fess up and clear everything before she moves ( she has given her 2 weeks notice, she is NOT coming back). I wonder if Nikki would have tried for a long distance with Bear just to see if she should date someone who is not a self centered prick like Ian?? even if she doesn't see Bear that way. But it feels like she just didn't see Bear that way ever and wouldn't go through with it. If Nikki had said no when Bear confessed, Bear would have been forced to let go of her as this North Star who would make his life better for him.

I have seen lots of people react to the movie and thinks Nikki was giving Bear a chance when she asked him to tell how he feels. But I think she just wanted to clear every emotional accounts between them and keep it normal before she moves, so she can maintain a friendship long distance or cut him off if necessary.