a quiet sea

Starting from pople tending to turn every story about siblings who are not besties into this huge tragedy instead of awknowledging that maybe, sometimes, people are not close with their siblings. Or that people are so weird about mothers.

But what irks me even more is the tendency to decide that two people who are close in canon have a "sibling coded relationship" which suddenly also means that shipping them together is wrong. Or if a character has an older person in their life whom they look up to - well that is their parent now!!!! They can't fuck their parent!!!!

There is this underlying idea that elevating characters into a familial bond is above such concepts as romantic love or sex. Which sucks because that is not what the concept found family means - it was meant to describe the queer experience of finding your people and community from outside of your blood relatives, and it was never meant to say that there can't also be romantic relationships within that community.

And it is not even always about the fact that I want to ship my blorbo with everyone who comes near him (although I absolutely do), but I think that sometimes there can be meaningful dynamics that are not about family. I want my blorbo to have friends, lovers, partners, mentors, neighbours, a trusted older person who they can call to but is not their parent.

Anakin was still alive in Obi-Wan’s mind. Obi-Wan was engaged with him so intensely that he expected his apprentice to walk over one of those shifting sand dunes and grin at him again. Or scowl. He’d take anything. Any mood, any defiance. Just to see him again. Every day and every night he violated every principle the Jedi had taught him about staying in the present moment, about acceptance.

I show up and am given a list of cognitively engaging but achievable tasks

I complete the list