Just call me Ty

Zutara week 2026 prompt: Warmth

last week i asked how folks defined 'kidfic', and got a fairly strong majority defining it as 'caring for/parenting a child' in some capacity, with a smaller but not-insignificant people defining it as 'de-aging'.

Which means I have a question for a similarly contentious fan term.

ɪ'ᴍ ꜱᴏʀʀʏ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ɪɴ ꜱᴏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ ᴘᴀɪɴ... ɪ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ꜰᴇᴇʟ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴏᴏɴ︕

ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ɪɴ ꜱᴏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ ᴘᴀɪɴ… ɪ ʜᴏᴘᴇ

ʏᴏᴜ ꜰᴇᴇʟ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴏᴏɴ︕

From a reverse image search, I found the website Show Your Stripes, run by the University of Reading in the UK, which is likely where the above graph originated. It provides temperature data for various regions of the world from approximately 1900-2025. For example, here are graphs for Canada, India, and Papua New Guinea:

In the books she's more specific. You don’t have a romantic partner in your life because that would mean you might suffer heartbreak. You avoid risk like the plague.

The film sets Grace up to have no friends, so when he finds a BEST friend in Rocky, of course he'll complete his narrative arc by going back to save him. The closest things he says are Stratt, Ilyukhina, Yào, and Carl. Carl and Stratt betray him. Ilyukhina and Yào abandon him. There just isn't room for Lokken or Dmitri, or even Marissa. They all sort of got screwed into Carl, leaving me at least to question what Carl was still doing on the project after four years, given he'd also been amalgamated with Steve.

I was gonna say only the kids were left untouched, but that's not true. Swapping their and Grace's reactions to the petrova line annoyed the shit out of me. How it was gives a sliver of backbone to Grace's assertion that he was going it for the kids, since they were the reason he went back to Stratt initially. It's a façade, but one Grace himself believed in enough to offer up.