#impacts the various relationships in his life. she doesn't even have to be a monster or a narrative mistake for him and syd to be | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bitchthefuck1 · 5 months ago

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you know what, I actually will talk about this because it's bothering me. The issue with focussing so heavily on syd and carmy's potential for a romantic relationship isn't that there's something inherently unintellectual about romance or whatever, it's that a lot of people seem incapable of doing that without immediately flattening the story and ignoring or intentionally misreading any and all nuance for the sake of that romance. Every scene suddenly becomes about how it impacts their relationship, every analysis is done through a romantic lens, every frame or line of dialogue becomes about finding some easter egg or hint that "proves" these people should start dating. Their dynamic is absolutely a fundamental part of this show, but if you can only see it as a will-they-won't-they, you miss so much of what the story is actually trying to say with these two.

There are good versions of this story where their relationship is romantic and there are good versions of this story where it isn't, but as soon as you decide them being together is "the point," you lose the ability to actually judge the story for what it is, not what you want it to be.

#like so much of their dynamic (esp but not exclusively in S3) has been about showing the ways that carmy's trauma and dysfunctional #attitude in the kitchen impacts other people and how even though he cares about syd and wants their partnership to work he keeps self #sabotaging and setting himself and by extension her and the restaurant up to fail and replicating the same toxic environments that #he grew up and trained in and this is very much consistent with his character and a natural continuation of the conflicts they've been #having since S1 but because him being shitty with her runs contrary to them getting together suddenly its 'ruining the story' and #out of character and only happening bc the writers just hate to see this ship winning and like. if you really think that i genuinely don't #know what show you've been watching bc it sure as shit wasn't this one. like it hurts to see him do this because you know #they could do something genuinely great together and that he's ruining a really good thing but this is also the reality of where he is rn #if he was just a good and supporting business partner and not deeply dysfunctional it would be wildly out of character #the problem w S3 wasn't that it 'ruined' their relationship it's that it had no clear focus overemphasized carmy's arc at the expense #of the other leads deprioritized the supporting cast while failing to give them their own arcs gave more screen time to #unecessary and uninteresting new 'comic relief' characters and let conflicts stagnate without resolving them or #letting them evolve over the course of the season.#this isn't exclusive to the bear this is a general trend ive noticed where as soon as the 'shipper' part of people's brains get activated #it's like they lose the ability to read the story any other way and it stops being about what's good for the narrative and starts being #about whether or not these two people kiss and anything that gets in the way of that is bad and anything that brings it closer is good #and it's usually whatever but it's really frustrating when the story ppl are doing that to is this good #it also makes people fundamentally incapable of treating any 'obstacle' to that romance in a way that isn't wildly meanspirited and #gross (esp bc those characters are usually women) which is exhausting. like no claire isn't evil or a 'pick me' or 'bad' for carmy #or a useless addition to the story or whatever other nonsense you guys have decided must be true to feel okay. she's a perfectly normal #character and their relationship is exploring some of the ways that carmy's inability to deal with or actually address his trauma #impacts the various relationships in his life. she doesn't even have to be a monster or a narrative mistake for him and syd to be #'destined' for each other or whatever. this isn't a middle school wattpad fic.#im definitely gonna get killed in the street for this but ive been looking for a good reason to spend less time on here so might as well #the bear #sydcarmy #sydney adamu #carmy berzatto

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