#six years of being essentially a married couple later they finally acknowledge that actually maybe they like each other as more than just ‘i

[dancedance-resolution]

my boobs have been hurting pretty badly??? i just started on the birth control patch in my latest attempt to deal with pmdd so it’s probably just that but like. jeez. give me a break

[unwiltingblossom]

Hey there. Sasusaku may know me, but Zutara probably doesn’t. I’m not in the ATLA fandom, but I have observed enough to notice something that intrigues me about Zutara, aside from the fact I’d totally board the ship if I were foolish enough to watch a show knowing I was going to fail (actually, consider me proto-Zutara I guess because I think I liked it in the movie. Maybe I liked Kataang. Maybe I liked both. Can’t remember. moving on.)

I think it’s interesting that somewhat unintentionally Sasusaku and Zutara illustrate pretty clearly the difference between Japanese fandom and western fandom, in a way that Sasusaku already shows to a lesser degree.

There’s a bunch of fundamental differences in these two ships, I’m aware, but at their core, I feel they’re much the same. Call it ‘same energy’, if you will. Yet in one story they end up together and the writer keeps adding more things to insist that they are, and in the other one they end up apart and the writers keep trying to delegitimize the pair more and more.

In Sasusaku’s case, not only do they marry and have a child, the writer has stated that he always intended them to be together, and given various interviews and novels and mini comics for them.

In Zutara’s case, the writers seem to contradict themselves claiming they didn’t plan it, and that while it’s interesting, they mock anyone who actually thinks it would be a good idea or would happen, claiming their relationship would be unhealthy and unhappy.

Now this is interesting, because there are parallels with how fandom reacted to Sasusaku (and if ATLA ever got released in Japan I’d be curious how the fandom reacted to Zutara). In Japan, Sasusaku has always been one of the, if not the, top ships. Mostly what beats it out is slash, because fujoshi are gonna fujosh. Fans love it, went crazy for its ending, and loved all the scenes it got leading up, joking about them getting married and such offscreen.

In the west, however, while Sasusaku is still super popular, it gets a LOT of pushback. People like to insult it, insist it’s abusive and horrible, claim that Sasuke and Sakura could never be happy, and that anyone who honestly thinks they should be together should never get into a relationship for their own safety, because they’re romanticizing abusive relationships and will be hurt.

Sure sounds familiar, right?

Well, I’ll do you one better. Because you’ll see often the complaint that “I wish Sakura had just been strong and realized she didn’t need a man, becoming an independent etc” or “This is really harmful to Sakura’s character, because it forces her to abandon the things she loves and live subservient to Sasuke as some wife”

These are, almost without exception, lies. What they’re almost always saying is actually “I wish she would have grown up past Sasuke and married instead (Naruto/Lee/Kakashi/Sai/a girl), but if she couldn’t do that, then at LEAST she should have been alone!” they just cut off the first part because it reveals their bias.

And frankly, there’s a lot of parallel between Narusaku, who had a childhood crush on Sakura because a part of him thought she’d give him the recognition he needed and becomes the sage of six paths hero who saves the world from war in the end, and...well. Kataang. Which basically seems to have been a puppy crush on the first girl he met, that he nurtured into love over years as he became the Avatar hero who saved the world from war in the end. Both have a brother/sister or mother/kid relationship with the female in question through their quest (Sakura treats Naruto much like an annoying little brother and Naruto + Minato both recognize Sakura as ‘like his mother’, and Katara has a very motherly relationship with Aang most of the time until they start kissing)

Most importantly, I feel there’s a lot of parallels to be found in Sasusaku and Zutara.

Sasusaku runs on a baseline of Sasuke being extremely hostile and cold to everyone, refusing to let anyone in, and Sakura reaching out to him and through his defenses over and over despite this. She is the first person that he admits the reason for his behavior to -before Naruto or anyone else, he begins to explain to her that his brother killed everyone - and they have a mutual respect. Sasuke acknowledges her skills and smarts, and considers her to be the one light in his life, the ‘spring breeze’ and ‘the one who filled his lonely existence with love’. Despite this, he betrays her and everyone else, choosing his revenge over his happiness, but even through the many years of isolation and hatred, his response to Sakura always has a softness that isn’t there for anyone else. He saves her when he doesn’t need to, he listens to and responds to her before anyone else, and he even offers to let her go with him on his quest. Yes, it’s because she’s a healer who can replace Karin, but do you really think he couldn’t have used Naruto at his side, the other one the village rejected and turned against, who might want revenge? Juugo and Suigetsu aren’t healers, but he keeps them anyway because they’re useful. Sakura is the only person in the Leaf he offers to join him.

Anyway. Although they’re enemies most of the story, her love for him endures and she keeps trying to reach out to him. Every once in a while he responds, catching her when she falls, caring about her harm. The eventual nexus of their relationship is after his final battle with Naruto - which he puts her to sleep during, because she jumped in the way and almost got killed last time, and he doesn’t want her to do so this time - is her kneeling over him laying on his back, healing him, crying. He apologizes until she finally accepts his apology, and canonically this is the moment he realizes he loves her (though it’s much longer before he acts on this in a real way).

I won’t presume to fully summarize Zutara, because I am but an observer. However, I do know that they begin as enemies, that she is able to break through his cold shell with her kindness and compassion, so that he opens up to her about things he either never does to anyone else, or doesn’t to anyone else for a long time. I do know that he betrays her trust, and that they don’t truly mend fences for a long time because of their antagonistic relationship and betrayed trust. I also know that one of their later moments involves a scene where Zuko is on his back and she’s kneeling over him in tears, and he thanks her.

Plenty of details are different, but there’s all sorts of similar themes, notes, and visual parallels. Zuko’s appearance during later episodes looks very similar to Sasuke’s appearance after his duckbutt hair stage, Sakura’s color scheme is usually red and Sasuke’s is blue, and of course Katara is blue while Zuko is red. Sakura is a healer (I can’t think of anything water related, no), and Sasuke uses fire (when it’s not illusions or lightning). You can definitely make a convincing argument to say these relationships are pretty close to the same thing portrayed in different media with a different story shaping their behavior.

So then, why is it that one of them ended up together and has a happy family life and is considered to be the ‘good end’, while the other one didn’t end up together and is considered to be the ‘bad end’ were they to get together?

Why also did Kataang get together and become the ‘perfect’ couple that everyone should have seen coming and agree with, but Narusaku was nothing more than jokes to tease the audience with occasionally and was completely sunk multiple times in canon before they both married other people?

Well...I think it’s a difference of cultural sensibilities directly affecting the outcome of the same story.

In the west, essentially, the woman is the ‘prize’ for the hero at the end of the journey. If he finishes his homework and saves the day, his reward is the woman he’s been pining after for ages. It doesn’t matter whether she openly wants him or not, there will be little ‘checkpoints’ through the story where you see that secretly she does want him as he gets better and ‘more heroic’, so anything he does in trying to woo her is ‘acceptable effort’, essentially. And more importantly, the person who has love needs to ‘deserve’ that love. The heroine has to get with a ‘good’ person like the hero because the antihero isn’t ‘good enough’ for her. He’s the ‘bad boy’ that she flirts with but then grows out of so she can marry the nice guy instead. And it’s this to an extreme. If she marries the ‘bad boy’, then she’s consigning herself to a lifetime of abuse or unhappiness, because she can’t be happy with someone who isn’t as good as her. This is tripled if they have an antagonistic relationship, like if they’re at war with each other and have been enemies. (this doesn’t work in reverse. A bad girl can marry a good guy if she sufficiently redeems herself and goes good, because men can’t be abused in this cultural standard) Instead, the antihero generally ends up with a woman of similar morals if he marries - another bad girl turned good, another rogue figure, something like that. That’s because it’s what he deserves and in turn what she deserves.

Weirdly enough, it works in reverse for attractiveness - hot women marry down, but not hot men. But that’s neither here nor there right now. The point is, you can see how on this scale the ending NEEDS to be by western standards Kataang, Maiko, Narusaku, Sasukarin. The tarnished and dark man MUST marry the tarnished woman of ‘inferior morals’, while the good and pure hero MUST marry the heroine, because she must be his prize for his heroism and success, and  he is the only one worthy of her goodness, therefore the only one who can make her happy.

In Japan, it’s just not really like that. The hero doesn’t need to get the girl in the end as his reward, and in fact it’s often the girl who gets the man she’s always wanted by the end of the story. This is because ‘patience and dedication’ is seen as more praiseworthy and deserving of reward. Because the heroine stuck with the love she had even when that person wasn’t ‘deserving’ of it yet, her love should blossom and be returned to her. Much more focus is on enduring and quietly continuing onward in spite of difficulty, basically. Orihime must get Ichigo because she loved him from the beginning. Same with Naru and Keitaro, Hinata and Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke, Juvia and Grey. They ‘make their love choose them’ instead. In fact, who the man wants is sometimes just played off as a joke, such as in Black Clover where Asta is determined to marry a nun while there’s a princess not-so-secretly swooning over him. It’s not hard to guess how that story is going to end.

Anyway, because the qualifications of what makes an ‘acceptable romance target’ differs in  Japan, worrying about whether the girl is ‘good enough’ or the man is ‘good enough’ for the romance is less important, only whether they’re dedicated or patient enough.

It’s not saying one is better than the other, whether using the man as the prize or the woman as the prize is the correct way of writing it - and there are exceptions, plenty of Naruto’s couples are written just because they go well together, there’s western stories where the girl gets the bad boy after he’s redeemed himself and it’s fine - but the differences are there to be seen.

And, weirdly enough, I think is what ultimately determined the different endings between Naruto and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

[him-e]

Hi, I sent the original ask about a Celibate Rey ending, I don't know what discourse came out of it, I didn't see it, but I wanted to clear the air. I didn't mean to come off dismissive of female romance/sexuality or of your ship in my ask. I understand it can be exhausting to defend your perspective over and over to people who don't want to listen, so I totally get if you thought I was baiting, though. I'm sorry for the trouble or stress this caused you.

Not asking to troll or continue the discourse, but if you don’t want to continue discussing this topic please delete this. But how can you see a valid Celibate-Rey endgame going? If IX were to end with Rey on her own and to some degree happy (Since this is Star Wars, the ending has to be at least slightly happy or hopeful) what kind of an ending would it be? If Kylo dies or survives, either/or.

Hey, no problem at all, and sorry for my snappish answer (hopefully you realized I was being part tongue-in-cheek, though). Admittedly the “better off alone/celibate” argument is something that cyclically resurfaces in other ships of mine, particularly Jaime/Brienne, which made me skittish on the whole thing, particularly when it’s tied to *female agency* buzzwords and the assumption that it’s the shippers who are arbitrarily trying to force a romance on the character, rather than it being part of the character’s canon narrative (not necessarily your case, but it’s such a popular argument against the J/B ship that I’ve developed particularly nasty anticorps for it)

So re: Celibate Jedi!Rey—

Is it a technically possible endgame for her? Totally.

Is it something I would personally be okay with and find satisfying? Well, yes, if:

a) it acknowledges and gives closure to Rey’s feelings for Ben, and viceversa. This includes admitting a degree of bittersweet in the happily ever after final picture.

Just considering the force bond alone without its romantic implications, Rey and Kylo, just the two of them, are connected on a deep intimate level. This is kind of a big deal, especially for Rey, whose familial bonds were suddenly and irrevocably severed when she was little, after which she was left completely alone with no chance to find her way back to her parents (ironically, now she has a magical tracking device in her head that allows her to communicate with another person even across galaxies. From completely alone, to never completely alone even in her own head. Big deal, indeed). 

Even if the bond is broken (because Kylo dies, or else) and no overtly romantic stuff happens between them, it will still leave a mark on Rey, an empty spot where something magical used to be that can only be partially filled with familial or “muggle” love and the purpose of a “lone” Jedi path. That she would bury Kylo (or watch him leave never to return) and immediately go to join the Resistance’s party original trilogy style as if nothing sad just happened doesn’t make a lot sense to me. In fact, it would infuriate me, as I hate when characters are written as if they had some emotion switch hidden somewhere that makes them go from sad to cheerful in the blink of an eye (and tbh TLJ, for all I liked it, already went dangerously close to that, with Rey’s jarring post-proposal cheerfulness on the Falcon during the whole Crait sequence, imo). 

So if they want to go that route, they need to be ready to tinge their happy ending with a little melancholy, otherwise I won’t find it realistic at all. This especially if Kylo dies, but also if he leaves or they are separated for whatever reason. (if Kylo lives, and redeems himself, and stays, I don’t see any reason why he and Rey should not be together, tbh. I mean it’s not like there’s still a Jedi order around dictating what Rey is or isn’t allowed to do. Like Palpatine was the Senate, she is the Jedi Order now, she can make new rules, lmao)

b) it avoids attaching moralistic implications to this choice (?) of celibacy (”that’s what I’m really meant for”, or “that’s how I’ll live my life to the fullest and be truly happy”, etc).

The figure of the Jedi in SW is, at the end of the day, a caregiver. A magical warrior/monk who essentially devotes their life to other people, denying any sort of personal ambition of satisfaction for himself (self-drive is closer to the Sith way). While the extent of this self-abnegation can be reframed and repackaged in a more “progressive” light (say Rey rebuilds a Jedi order with different rules, or just chooses a different way to be a Jedi, see above), the essence of caregiving and selflessness will probably remain untouched. It’s really funny to me that the people who want this endgame for Rey are the same one who get their panties in a twist at the thought of Rey being “reduced to an emotional caregiver” for Ben (paraphrasing some anti post I’ve read recently). The point is, Celibate!Jedi Rey wouldn’t be simply choosing friendship/family/a career over romance, she’d actually sacrifice her individual (in this case, romantic/sexual) desires in order to become a caregiver for an entire community. And this isn’t something I’d consider an especially subversive or /empowering/ endgame for a female character, quite the opposite, actually. The subtext here needs to be handed carefully, particularly if her endgame involves rebuilding some sort of Jedi school for gifted children: the risk of elevating her to a self-sacrificial virgin mother archetype would be pretty high. It can be done, and it can imply Rey will find happiness in this life, but without any sort of hamfisted *inspirational moral message for little girls*, if you know what I mean.

c) it doesn’t frame Rey’s choice not to be with Kylo specifically (if it is indeed a choice on her part and not something dictated by external forces, aka Kylo’s death or the Willabeth endgame, more on that later) in a moral(istic) perspective.

no “I can’t be with you because you have been mean to people, ewww” bullshit, thank you very much. This sounds like the ultimate anti wet dream, Rey rejecting Kylo because he’s awful, and I think we’re WAAAYYYY past it with all that happened in TLJ.

I hope this clarifies things a bit!

Another anon asked me to explain what I meant with the Willabeth endgame, and:

in POTC III Will Turner kills Davy Jones, so he has to take his place as the captain of the Flying Dutchman, which is a curse for life. He and Elizabeth (who are now married) spend a last day together on an island (during which it’s implied they fuck like rabbits and conceive a child, lmao), and then, at sunset, Will says goodbye, leaving the box containing his heart to Elizabeth, to whom he says, “will you keep it safe for me?”. It’s heartbreaking and a bit sadistic tbh but also incredibly romantic.

How does this apply to Reylo?

Well, Kylo could be 

sentenced to lifelong exile on a remote planet, or 

imprisoned for life, or 

going on exile on his own will, or 

leaving to form a new order of darksiders (or something) as he feels he has no place among the Good Guys and has Redeemed Himself But Not Really, or 

sentenced to death and then promptly freed by Rey, who urges him to leave never to return, for his own safety, or

in general, literally or metaphorically cursed to live an existence separated from Rey as a form of atonement alternative to death;

and Rey obviously can’t follow him, because she can’t and won’t abandon her place among the Resistance, and they both know this, but it doesn’t stop them for wanting each other and swearing they will wait for each other forever, cue pants-dropping emotional final goodbye scene which, while offering complete closure, leaves the possibility of a future reunion entirely possible.

Why do I think it’s a valid scenario?

it’s a good compromise between endgame Reylo and Celibate!Jedi Rey;

Kylo gets to Suffer ™, as y’all hope for;

an unwritten but very common and wise rule of storytelling (whether or not you agree with it) is that a couple who can’t be together NOW is more interesting than a couple who is Just Together and chillin’ on the sofa or something, so this endgame leaves things open enough to be further explored in hypothetical tie-in canon material (comics, novels, tv adaptations, maybe even a standalone Episode IX-bis in five or six years from now, WHO THE HELL KNOWS?);

the fanfictions would SKYROCKET; 

the force bond, if it still exists at that point, would be an INCREDIBLY convenient plot device;

Reylo Sex Island

end