#...i may or may not be basing this off experience with shitty exes myself lmao

[nukacourier]

While a lot of people reasonably don't like the bully ending up falling in love with their target troupe, I honestly don't feel really bad about pairing Butch and James together for a few reasons. And this is speaking as both a writer and someone who was bullied constantly through his childhood

First of all, I don't have them end up together to be a perfect couple where it's like nothing bad happened between them, their relationship is rocky at best. In my narrative it's very obvious that Butch is 100% not good for James despite having sweet moments, James constantly has his doubts about their relationship and people outside of the relationship often point out how shitty of a boyfriend Butch is to him

Secondly, I know that for something like that to realistically work the bully character would need to do a lot of introspection and growing as a person to be viable for any positive relationship with the target of their harassment, so the whole reason they fall apart is BECAUSE Butch never fully committed to changing. He thought that he simply needed to be nice more than mean and spoil him to make up for constantly neglecting James' needs and still belittling him (whether intentional or not) and because of that they have a very messy breakup (and James doesn't miss their relationship too much)

So, lastly, it's basically like a narrative where the shitty actions of Butch leads to quite a bit of consequences where his asshole tendencies leaves him alone and vulnerable in a world he's not suited for. To an extent it's also something that leads James along in a narrative way where he starts to lose his naivety and learn that sometimes people will suck and treat him badly and it's not his fault and not something he can magically change without hurting himself for it

TL;DR - I hope when people see me mention their relationship they don't assume I'm writing it in a shippy, "omg they're so cute together!!!" way but rather in a "this is the way these characters would interact" way

(Also as usual quick clarification that I'm talking about my oc James Junior and NOT Liam Neeson James)