#sfkbgjsngsbjlkjdfb

[catty-words]

uhhhh you made some gifs about ben tryng to kiss devi twice despite her not wanting that and you got real poetic in the tags. have you considered that maybe that's messed up? he tried to kiss her. twice. without her consent. a second time he did it after she'd said no. Devi looked really uncomfortable. And he never apologized, just blamed alcohol. how can you romantiise that??? shipping her with ben is fine but uhhhhhhhh that's fucked up

good lord, okay. if that scene bothers you, then it bothers you and i’m likely not going to change your mind about it any more than you’re going to convince me not to enjoy it. but the tone of this ask feels as though your trying to deem it problematic™ in order to feel like you’ve done your work reading the text critically and, like, look. i’m not going to say that your reading is incorrect. devi was uncomfortable. she removed herself from the situation, such was the gravity of her discomfort. but i also don’t think yours is the most genuine reading of the scene, if you wanna be honest. and hey, you came into my askbox, so you’re inviting my honest opinion.

consent is important. let’s start there. if ben were a more perfect person, he’d have asked if he could kiss devi before doing it. but the thing is, one of the main takeaways from the scene is that, far from perfect, ben is an awkward teen boy very much in his own head about his newly intense crush and his all-consuming loneliness. so he doesn’t ask the first time he leans in—he instead relies on the context clues of the birthday present and devi generally being cute and a little giggly to decide she might be into kissing. totally understandable. endearing, even, that ben and devi have this what-the-hell-i’ll-go-for-it kind of approach to crushing in common.

so, the second kiss. not as clean-cut i’ll grant you. devi’s body language and her words communicate that she’s Not Into It. but one of the things i personally find interesting about the scene is the way they’re on two very different pages the whole time. ben wants to unload about how much his parents suck, and devi didn’t exactly show up to the party to shoulder the burden of ben’s loneliness. she’s dealing with plenty of her own that she’s trying to ignore with a Traditional Popular Kid Experience, while ben’s trying to ignore his by hanging with his crush.

that said, ben wanting to kiss devi so badly that he misreads her “it’s cool” as an invitation rather than the placating gesture it is strikes me as well-motivated based on what we know about ben and as a very human thing to do. unflattering? totally. hard to look at directly for all the secondhand embarrassment? depends on your tolerance level. but messed up? i don’t feel the need to take it to that place.

more importantly, though, devi doesn’t feel the need. she tells him in no uncertain terms that him trying to kiss her is why she’s walking away, but she stops and listens to his apology that he pretty much immediately gives her. she trusts him enough to place herself in the extremely vulnerable position of moving in with him.

and sure, i’ll grant you that in both his apologies—because he does apologize and he does it twice, once immediately and then again when he sees her at school—he uses alcohol as a justification. but he’s clearly embarrassed and uncertain where they stand now. we’ve been shown the way that his dynamic with devi is a grounding force in his life; it makes sense that he’s a bit panic-stricken. when i’m flustered by my own shortcomings, i don’t give the best apologies, either. so the fact that his first and also most pressing instinct is to smooth things over, to me, speaks to his character in a good way.

tl;dr: i don’t feel the need to problematize ben’s behavior because devi was in control of the situation the whole time! but if the awkward mess that is those two interacting while wanting wildly different things isn’t entertaining to you, i do not begrudge you this!

anyway, thanks for thinking my tags are poetic that was nice