hmm. okay this is super incoherent but I’m thinking about how el loves romance movies with dramatic love confessions, and mike was raised by two parents who don’t love each other but pretend like they do, and I’m thinking about how that affects their love languages and communication styles and what they think love looks like.
because el has learned to see love as big, sweeping, clear statements of love, the word love itself. but mike has seen that you can call something love without that actually meaning anything, and so to him what love actually is is what you do for others, and that’s his love language. when he says, “I say it,” he says it so surely; it’s not a lie, mikes a bad liar. he does say it, just not with words like el does, like el has come to expect from the movies she watches.
which is also really interesting bc she shows love through action so much, but she doesn’t see herself as doing that, she sees it as what she has to do, when everything she does is a way of saying “I love you” without saying it.
mike doesn’t think she’s incredible bc of her powers, he thinks she’s incredible bc of what she does with them, and he has always been the first person to give that type of love right back to her. he is the first to protect her every season: to shelter and feed her, to come up with a distraction for the demodogs, to tell her she doesn’t need to constantly be putting herself at risk for others, to ask for a new plan that doesn’t hurt her. even the little things, like writing letters and hand picking her flowers in her favorite colors and bringing her breakfast. that is how he shows his love for her, and why I think he sounds so solid and honest and serious when he tells her, “I say it,” even when he can’t say it say it
anyway I’m just having some half-formed thoughts about mike trusting actions over words bc of his parents but el needing words bc she can’t see her own actions as the acts of love that they are bc of how she sees herself. with a dash of hollywood influence from the (black and white both literally and metaphorically) romance movies she watched and mimicked in s2
I just think that’s such a real, complex conflict, and I’m actually really impressed with that conversation/argument. but idk maybe it’s not that deep lol (((it’s at least a little deep tho lbr)))
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