Amy: Alright. So as I've emailed to all of you, we're going to adapt the Trigon arc for Teen Titans Season 4.
David: I'm looking forward to this. I think this season has the chance to be our best yet. We're working with great source material here, like in Season 2.
Rob: I agree... But there's something nagging at me.
Rob: We are 40 episodes in, and I just realised that we have almost written no significant interactions between Raven and Robin.
Richard: I would say that their quasi mind-meld in "Haunted" is kind of a big deal.
Melody: Sure, but that's the extent of their talking to one another, don't you think? Raven has had more episodes where she interacts with Cyborg (Car Trouble), Starfire (Switched) and especially Beast Boy (The Beast Within).
Tom: Oh crap. I see your point.
Rob: We're going to have to cram in as much dialogue between those two "Bird" characters as much as possible, just so to make up for lost time.
David: Ooh, I don't know.
Amy: What makes you say that?
David: We've said in an earlier meeting that Robin x Starfire is canon. By focusing on the Robin/Raven relationship in the way you just described for the upcoming season, we might be giving the audience the false impression that Raven might have a thing for Robin, and/or vice versa.
Melody: But I think this is a tightrope act that we can get away with. We just need to avoid some easy pitfalls that can lead viewers to that conclusion.
Amy: Really? What do you have in mind?
Melody: We'll get the most obvious rules out of the way. First, we can't write scenes of them doing something that looks intimate, like hugging.
Greg: Oh, I see now. I also think we can avoid things like hand-holding.
Tom: Yeah. When characters of the opposite gender do things like hugging and holding hands, you're almost signalling to the viewers that there might be something going on between the two.
Rob: We also want to avoid scenes with the two characters being alone with each other. It's not a hard-and-fast rule per se, but we want to reserve these sorts of "alone with each other" moments for Robin and Starfire, not Robin and Raven.
David: Yeah. It's best to add dialogue between Raven and Robin while the rest of the team is in close proximity. The audience will just treat the exchange as character building, but also banal.
Rob: These are all rules of thumb that we can follow well enough. I mean, it's not like we're going to write a scene where Robin goes to hell and back again to rescue Raven from Trigon. I mean, think of the implications and questions that hypothetical moment raises!
Amy: Oh, perish the thought.
David: The chances of us writing that scene is about as likely as having this show extended to a fifth season. HAH!