One bowl of flea soup please!

If you're going into the season completely blind with no prior knowledge that Robin is a lesbian, like most of us did when it came out in 2019, the you're already sort of primed by narrative conventions to root for Robin and Steve to end up together, or at least expect them to. By s3 we know that steve is a Good Guy, and therefore he deserves a girlfriend. But we're not supposed to root for steve and nancy anymore, because nancy is with Jonathan now and Jonathan is also a Good Guy. So enter Robin, who is paired exclusively with steve for the entire season, and the solution becomes obvious.

And the thing is, they do seem to hit all the standard tropes for a romance arc. They have chemistry! They act like they don't like each other but they have funny banter. They hold hands during a tense moment. Dustin repeatedly encourages steve to go after her. Robin admits that she was obsessed with him in high school.

And then the reveal comes and it turns out there actually is a platonic explanation for everything, at least on robin's side. And even as a queer woman myself, when I watched it for the first time I was almost disappointed for a second, because I love steve and want good things for him.

And that's part of why it works so well for me, because it did piss people off (not everyone - iirc it was actually pretty well received at the time, but there were definitely factions of both shippers and reddit bros who hated it, some of which still remain in denial to this day) and because it works as a sort of meta commentary on what it's like to be a gay woman in real life even forty years later. Because unless you're openly and visibly queer, people will assume that you're available to any guy that's interested and jump to conclusions about your relationships with close male friends. Straight is automatically assumed as the default, and by keeping the audience in the dark about Robin's sexuality until the crucial moment, our own subconscious biases are exposed. There's nothing to suggest that she's gay before she says it, but equally there's nothing to suggest that she's straight, it's just the conclusion we jump to because that's what we've been trained to expect.

JERK IT

WRITE RPF

DRINK ALCOHOL

BLOG LIKE IVE NEVER BLOGGED BEFORE

job ?

JENNIFER'S BODY

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

A FEVER YOU CAN’T SWEAT OUT (september 27, 2005)