yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.
to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!
i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.
also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.
they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.
they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.
i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.
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i've had a fic in my drafts for multiple years now (first version of it is from shortly post witch in the web) about paul becoming something of a surrogate dad for hannah (or, more accurately, just beginning on that journey, and then the events of tgwdlm happen).
and now i have an idea for a similar story that i think i'm even less likely to finish, so i'm gifting it to tumblr:
bill becoming grace's new, better dad (potentially leading to, depending on how much you want to balloon the scope, the full ccrp gang (minus ted, for timeline reasons we'll get to shortly) becoming psuedo-parental figures for the full npmd protag gang)
to start: bill and grace. i think we can all agree that grace deserves better parents, right? well, there's one reason i think bill is the prime candidate to step into that role for her: they're canonically the same denomination and go to the same church. meaning that a) bill has seen this girl once a week for probably her whole life, so he's got to at least know her a little bit by now, and b) grace probably has a baseline level of respect for and willingness to listen to him, at least compared to any of the other ccrp adults (who are all different denominations).
them having their church in common gives them a starting point, but we also know just how different bill is from grace's parents (for one, he has no problem with his daughter being gay and dating). so being around him could give grace another perspective on life, one she wouldn't be so easily able to dismiss out of hand. there's a chance, however slight, that grace might actually believe him when he shows her there are other ways to be good. other ways to Be.
i guess there's also the possibility that grace's family (and thus grace) could secretly despise bill for not adhering to their version of their denomination's beliefs? but i still think it could work given the right circumstances.
what would be those circumstances, you ask? here's what i think:
the workin boys timeline, post workin boys (gals).
think about it: bill was there, and he has to know grace was there, since she's the one who Dealt with hidgens. imagine being him, and going to church the next sunday, and seeing her there. you'd be at least a little concerned about how she's doing, right?
now, answer me this: do you think grace's parents would be at all equipped to give grace the emotional support she would need after that experience? do you think they'd react at all rationally when they found out about this whole thing?
do you think grace would be able to fully keep up appearances the next time she went to church, after smiting someone in the name of god?
which is to say, i think bill, for as obtuse as he can sometimes be, would notice that she's not okay. and knowing how much he misses alice when she's not around, and how much he always worries for her... i think it's a fair jump to make that bill's fatherly side would start coming out. that he'd offer to be there for grace, and maybe start looking into her family on his own.
and grace, after a short while doing her best to hold things together on her own, cracks, and decides to take him up on that offer.
i think bill would have to do some more developing himself in order to really help grace, because we do see in his relationship with alice that familiar strain of overprotectiveness, even if it's much less dominant than in the chasitys. in that respect, i think setting a version of this idea in the watcher world timeline could be easier, because bill goes through some serious development there... but overall i find that version less interesting for grace, so instead, bill is gonna have to learn the longer way.
it would take a while for bill to start getting at the heart of how grace got messed up by her parents. but i think, with enough time — and maybe some help from a certain social worker and his specially gifted (girl)friend, if we say this timeline is one of the better 50% — he could get there.
now, i mentioned the other npmd teens up top. for the sake of this story, i like imagining that ruth actually survived; she hid when hidgens started murdering and he didn't get to her before the curtains went up. so she gets to be here! yay!
but, uh. none of them are doing too hot. obviously a ruth who lived through that would be traumatized; it might even ruin her love of theater entirely. ritchie saw it all, and i figure ruth wouldn't come out of hiding until after it was all over, so there were a good few minutes at least where he genuinely believed his (maybe best) friend was dead.
and, pete... he wasn't there, but, ya know. he lost his brother. so.
all the kids need help, is the point. and if bill is starting to look after grace, then it's basically inevitable (heh) that he'd start seeing some of ritchie (since he and grace were already kind of friends in this timeline, and i can imagine them developing a trauma bond in the aftermath of the event) and then, by association, ruth. i can even imagine him encouraging grace to hang out with them more as part of her healing, and then they could start having hang-outs at his place, and...
plus, i figure the other ccrp adults probably at least vaguely knew about ted's younger brother, so bill doing at least one courtesy check-in on pete makes sense. and pete is friends with richtie and ruth, so, it all comes together!
and at some point, if bill is gonna end up helping out all these teens to some extent, it'll probably become part of his small talk at work, and that's how, if you wanted to, you could get the other adults involved.
like, we know paul has babysat for alice before, so i think bill could probably convince him to help out here too... eventually. i mean, it's not like he'd ask him to take them to a musical, given Everything.
if paul has started pursuing something with emma, then she can be here too!
and charlotte... well, i don't know if we know anything about her opinion on children, and i don't want to stereotype her given she's the only woman of the group. but she's at least generally a nice person; i think she'd be willing to help out when she sees bill starting to get overwhelmed.
which basically just leaves the question of how steph gets involved. my answer: she hears about what happened, then learns that pete's brother was one of the casualties, and through some combo of feeling obligated and having a spark of an interest in pete, reaches out to him to ask how he's doing. so she gets pulled in through him. with this set-up, tho, i figure she probably wouldn't be a major player (though she definitely also deserves a better parent... that can be its own story).
to kind of wrap this up, the point of this whole story concept is that bill accidentally gets a second daughter, figuring out how to be a better dad in the process; and grace, on the precipe of entering adulthood with some fresh trauma, gets a real chance at salvation. a chance to be, relatively, normal. or, whatever she wants to be when free of her parents' expectations and religious standards. anything else for any other characters is a bonus.
(there can also be some alice — bill drama when alice next visits and starts noticing how much bill is devoting himself to this girl that isn't even his daughter. drama that, eventually, results in the two of them becoming closer, and grace getting an honorary older sister!)
(also remember that duke and holloway can be here helping with the kids, if you want them to be. and why wouldn't you?)
like i said up-top, i have no plans to actually write this. y'all can take it and do whatever you want with it. i just hope at least one other person gets something out of this bain blast i had :D
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