#idoy

My boys live rent free in my brain.

Art for my fic “I Dreamt of You”

No offense taken :) I wanted Neytiri and Trudy to be a sort of false foil for Jake and Tsu’tey. Jake and Tsu’tey always knew each other, always loved each other, they didn’t get a clumsy meet->like->love romance. Neytiri liked Trudy, she thought she was interesting and funny, but not much else. She didn’t intend to bond with Trudy, she never meant for it to be a long term thing, at least not at first. There’s a bit of a time skip between chapter 23 and 24, so its weeks that she’s visiting Trudy. On the night she accidentally forms the bond, she panics and leaves, because that wasn’t her intention. She’s not ashamed. Remember a tsaheylu links two people together, so not only is Neytiri panicking over this permanent bond she formed by accident, but also parsing out what it meant at same time. She went from just getting to know Trudy to suddenly knowing her body, mind, and soul through their bond, even if just for a moment.

In the original version of IDOY, I had Trudy declare to Mo’at and Eytkuan that she loved Neytiri. In the revised/current version, I changed it to say she cares for Neytiri and wants to stay and figure out how to make this relationship work. They’re not in love, in a mature, fully-formed sense, but there was already affection and the beginnings of feelings forming before the bond.

In the way that Jake and Tsu’tey didn’t truly get a choice, Neytiri and Trudy don’t really get one either, even though they tend to treat it as if they did. IDOY, at its core, is about choosing to actively love someone and learning to live with what that means.