#but yea no mike wanting to save kevin just bc he hates max wouldve been so good lmfao

[expired-blueberries]

since were agreeing to disagree, i wont drag that point out, but something i realized when you were talking about the tennysons - it seems like a lot of the big stuff was caused by the women and consequently forgiven. like you said, sunny tried to nuke a town, and gwen requested kindness for her even though gwen was, largely, the driving factor for sunnys impatience and desire to have fun (not wholly gwens fault, of course, and some of it was just anodite nature, but gwen both refused to give sunny the time of day while simultaneously showing and telling sunny that that was what she was doing, and instead of at any point trying to reach sunny on her level she just huffed and yelled at her until eventually verdona came to get her). vera seemingly knowingly and purposefully doing more and more disruptive and dangerous things on the base until max finally pays her attention and apologizes to her (and i will say at least part of this blame shouldve fallen on maxs shoulders too since it took him so long to stand up to her and also because why the fuck would you bring a civilian onto a military/plumber base without close supervision lmfao) . gwen... doing gwen things and yet still somehow always being in the right. even verdona fucking up franks house while trying to force gwen into verdonas ideal and in the end everybody just kind of moves on. obviously the men of the family have their own issues to deal with, but it is interesting how much trouble happens because of the women

i think gwens standards really are pretty interesting sometimes. like, too me, she really doesnt seem like somebody who has ACTUALLY had a boyfriend before. rather, she seems like somebody who has watched a ton of movies and tv shows about having boyfriends in high school and therefore has an idealized version of what her first boyfriend should be like. what do you mean hes a fully fledged person with his own feelings, morals, and ideals? that cant be true! hes supposed to be just like all those guys in those teen romcoms that were fixed with the power of love! why should she ever have to tell him things? isnt he supposed to just be able to *know* what shes thinking if he truly loves her? its also interesting to note that im pretty sure she actually *can* read minds herself. i didnt see it listed on the wiki but like i am almost positive i remember a uaf episode where that was the case. which is REALLY interesting, having gwen expecting others can read minds since she can (and may very well do often, even if she doesnt realize it - it could be an explanation for why shes often right about people. ofc disregard all of this if im wrong lmao). so of COURSE he should know what shes doing! of COURSE he should just UNDERSTAND! why wouldnt he? whats wrong with him?

platonic gwen and kevin really did have potential, i agree. they had some of the same interests, if you include stuff like gwens interest in technology from os and kevins interest in mechanics and tech in uaf. gwen thinking hes stupid is a pretty massive tragedy when hes smart enough to disarm a bomb by himself - she should think thats the coolest shit ever! and yeah, honestly, if gwevin wasnt forced so quickly so early then i really do think that they could have had the potential to be great. its so strange to me how much they pushed it, too... like, who in their demographic was watching the show and the showrunners expected would want to see their relationship? and, frankly, WHY do we focus so much on their relationship when ben also has his own girlfriend? (with whom i think a lot of their drama is a bit contrived but thats neither here nor there lol). shouldnt we focus on bens relationship with julie - or literally any other girl character - over gwen and kevins relationship, since ben is the star of the show? jeez.

i hope they both find love and they find it very far away from each other, AFTER theyve both had copious therapy (and gwen has been popped with a newspaper every time shes pushing it lmao). and then, hopefully, after that happens, they can meet up again and be friends for real. JUST friends.

I don't have the emotional fortitude to write it, but the brain does sometimes mosey over to the potential aftermath of simple shit like 'the Omnitrix is programmed to prevent its wielder from dying', 'Ben is known to occasionally get the wrong alien', and 'falling from great heights is very bad for your health' coming together after Gwen shoves the boys out of the ship during Showdown to result in one dead Kevin.

Like damn but that could be one dramatic and painful storyline.

[kariachi]

I really think it goes back to the writers having that nice brand of 'a good female character is Perfect and Right and always Better and Smarter than the boys and will always remind that they are Superior' brand of misogyny that just leads to the ladies being assholes whose bullshit is minimized. Even for characters who aren't getting the full treatment themselves. In these cases it seems to lead to a place of 'if we have the guys causing problems than it's a Problem because it's more serious when guys do things, but if we have the ladies causing problems then we can and must dust it under the rug because of course it's not as serious as all that'. An amazingly pervasive form of misogyny in the last 20-or-so years.

And from an in-universe perspective, I have to assume relation to Verdona plays a role, because three of the problems are her and her grandchildren, but I also have a theory that Tennysons just have this tendency to go 'I'm going to help' and just run with their first idea without actually thinking about it. Because Vera's whole thing was 'I'm going to help out around here' and then she didn't ask how she could help, she just decided what she was going to do and did it no matter what anybody said or whether it helped or not. And Gwen's whole thing in Kevin's matter chimera arc was 'I'm going to help Kevin' and then she threw herself into research without a second thought to asking how she could help him, or even for any potentially useful information. And even in Verdona's premiere, Gwen's parents and Ben immediately jump to 'we're going to support Gwen's decision to leave' before she'd even made it and so end up doing shit like assuring her that she's replaceable. They just seem to have a nice combination going of 'my good intentions will carry me' and 'but they're family' that, has to be a fucking mess below the surface. Like no wonder there's so many secrets in that family, it'd dissolve like tissue paper.

That really is the vibe Gwen gives. Like she's watched too many middle school and teen romances where everything is Power of Love and a guy not knowing you prefer two squeezes of ketchup over your fries instead of three means he's a selfish jerk who needs to be Fixed or Left. Add in this desire to fix fuckers and a lack of acceptance of other people's boundaries...

And I also can't verify but I'd swear that came up in a scene where Gwen could read fuckers' minds and then it was just, never used again (which, theme with Gwen and Kevin, they're handled like old school superhero comics I swear- 'this issue Superman shows he can fart a pheromone that lures ants, this will never come up again in the next forty-two years of comics'). But again, can't actually verify that one. It would certainly help explain a bit of her bullshit, though it would also bring up a whole load of questions (like how the fuck she falls for people's shit, or why she couldn't figure out shit like 'Lucy isn't Bad').

I've asked it before to electraslight- does Gwen ever actually say why she likes Kevin? Does she ever give a reason? Like, we get reasons from Kevin, but never her. Like, like you said she should be so into tech with him, the shit he can do with tech should impress her, but the show and Gwen both seem to just brush them off. It's weird.

But yeah, the show just, for some reason decided, what? That this was the only reasonable way to bring Kevin into the group? That they needed to attract the yet-untapped Gwevin-fan demographic? Friendship is boring? Character growth is hard? 'If we give the non-white person more focus the studio will catch fire'? There were options out there.

Fuck, add Argit instead of Kevin, I still think we would have gotten a better show. Something more akin to Rooters arc!Argit than AF-canon, give us more blatant alien in Alien Force, force the treatment of aliens as people more than obstacles earlier, we still get Kevin access via Argit, lose the sudden jump from 'trying to kill the Tennysons' to 'working with them' and give more space to see his growth organically rather than having to drop it all on top of us at once, no rushed, toxic romance because like fuck they would have had the balls to set Gwen up with a rat- There's potential there!

*climbs off soapbox*

But anyway, yeah, Kevin and Gwen need-- Therapy, distance, separate lives, different states at minimum, let them grow, let them learn, let them form healthy shit. Then we can see how friendships go.

I don't have the emotional fortitude to write it, but the brain does sometimes mosey over to the potential aftermath of simple shit like 'the Omnitrix is programmed to prevent its wielder from dying', 'Ben is known to occasionally get the wrong alien', and 'falling from great heights is very bad for your health' coming together after Gwen shoves the boys out of the ship during Showdown to result in one dead Kevin.

Like damn but that could be one dramatic and painful storyline.