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otp-armada · 4 years

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"Bellarke doesn't make sense," they say. They say because Clarke hasn't done anything that resembles romantic gestures toward Bellamy.

Conceding to march to her possible death in exchange for Roan sparing Bellamy's life. Obstinately fighting against Bellamy's stubborn wishes to remain outside the Ark while Praimfaya burns to the world to ashes. Shattering her soul by choosing 100 people to live and writing his name on the list, because he must survive. She can't have it any other way. Relinquishing 50 of those spots to Azgeda when Bellamy is captured and threatened, and Roan calls her bluff. Desperation driving her to the extreme to ensure the survival of the human race, yet unable to kill Bellamy to keep the bunker closed and the grounders from possibly killing Skaikru. Leaving the guaranteed safety of the fort to stay by Bellamy's side on the brink of global cataclysm. The bittersweet yet soft head and heart exchange she prompted. The hesitation in her last remark before imploring him to hurry.

4x13 ends six years and seven days post-Praimfaya with Clarke radioing Bellamy on the Ring. An activity she performs daily for six years. In any six years of my adult life, my only daily consistencies have been limited to breathing, eating, and sleeping. This girl is devoted enough to send her equivalent of love letters into the emptiness of space for 2,199 days. Season 5 opens with her trying to survive by herself in an apocalyptic wasteland. She spends her journey narrating to him her unvarnished struggles during the most traumatic experience of her young life to date. Her despondency. Her loneliness. Her agony. Her desperation. Her small victories. Her discovered treasures. Her determination. Her doubt. Her guilt. Her defeat. Her morbid self-reflection. Her relief and contentment. Her happiness. Her admission of missing him. She shares all of it with only him. Only he is permitted to know her to this depth. Not any of her other people on the Ring. Not any of her people in the bunker, a group including her mother. Not a spiritual communion to the great, big love of her life Lxa, situated on her throne in the high heavens and waiting for her trophy wife, for Clarke to stay connected to her dearly departed. Isn't that the sort of behavior that might occur by a bereft widow?

After finding an oasis to rest and call home, even after discovering a companion to build a life with, she continues with her radio calls. It doesn't matter that he never received her communications. The importance of the gesture- the intimacy of sharing her life and thoughts with him while he was gone- remains the same. The magnitude of her devotion to him made clearer through the absence of a single responding utterance.

She lovingly tells Madi stories of Bellamy as her hero. Gazing warmly, hopefully up at the stars as if she longs for her vision to cut through an endless pitch-black sky and find dark curls and freckled constellations from thousands of miles away.

"Bellarke doesn't make sense," they say. They say because post-Praimfaya ended with an established B/E.

As Clarke looks up at the stars, questioning if she'll see Bellamy again, we transition to our first glimpse of Bellamy after six years, forlornly looking down on Earth to the very spot of green where he is unaware of who is yearning for him to return to her. Contrary to Clarke, who is covered in warm firelight when thinking of him, he is colored in cold, muted greys and blue, no speck of warm hue. (The rhyming scheme was unintentional, but hey, I'm going with it.) Behind him, his family is sparring, but he's distant from them. He's trapped within this tin can, his arms folded, his body taut, not facing the view on the other side of the glass, but still enraptured by the sight of his home below.

We see what changes to the characters and their dynamics have taken place until, at long last, we uproariously cheer as Bellamy & Co. find a way to return to Earth, the sole event we've been anticipating for eleven months, to the point we could feel it at our fingertips, jittery and tingly. Bellarke reunion!! He's going to know she's alive! Yes! Finally!! Break out the champagne! We're celebrating, dammit! It's going to be so damn emotional! Authors start crafting mental fanfics. People are bouncing off the walls like bright, errant fireworks, unable to sit still. I can't believe it's finally happening...what do you think it's going to be like? Will he run to her? Will he be stunned and speechless? Will they sob uncontrollably?!? They'll be clutching the life out of each other! Another Bellarke hug!! The very best hug!!! They're never going to let the other out of their sight again! He's going to meet Madi! Mom, dad, and adopted preteen make three!!! There's no way they're not getting together after this!! He just got her back after six years of thinking she was dead!! The reunion's not going to happen this episode, but maybe next week, when do you think? You mean we have to wait seven days before----

B e c h o.

We stood on the precipice of what we agonized and crawled through for eleven excruciating months, only for an anvil to drop, and our heads to be clubbed. Our bodies fell through the floor, descending lower and lower with immense haste, to take up residence in the seventh circle of hell.

Do you think the framing of these events wasn't intentional?

Do you think the powers that be behind the creation of that calamitous bombshell for our protagonist, intended for us to root for B/E?

By us, I'm not restricting the effect of the blow to Bellarke shippers. The entire audience, casual and fandom alike, shippers and non-shippers, was meant to await this reunion. We were all meant to feel devastated by this revelation.

If they didn't want to invoke in us feelings of support for B/E at their inception, how in the name of all things holy is a purported B/E endgame your conclusion?

"B/E doesn't make any sense," they say, "when last we saw them, she was his enemy. Nothing more, nothing less."

Do I think their pre-Praimfaya status as antagonists rendered it impossible for B/E to have a convincing love story or sexual relationship?

I think, if Jason were so inclined, we could have gotten flashback Ring rendezvous of secret trysts between Bellamy and a googly-eyed, blonde-wig-wearing broomstick designated Clarke 2.0. So no, I don't consider B/E a deviation inherently outside the realm of romantic possibility. Jason is an artist, and this show is his canvas. He can give life to almost any whim he'd like in his work of fiction. Not only that, but B/E is also hardly the first pairing in this series modeled by the enemies-to-lovers trope.

"Bellarke doesn't make sense, they'd say, "absent any concrete evidence alluding to a romantic relationship." "Seven years running, and not a trace of romantic love," they'd conclude.

Remind me, what was B/E's sublime prologue into coupling up again?

Furiously choking the life out of an enemy in a fit of rage two episodes before revealing her as his new girlfriend evidently can be considered by some an adequate precursor to a sensational romantic relationship. But endangering Earthkru's lives by risking the wrath of two societies in refusing to let Clarke die, pumping her heart for her to stay alive while begging her to fight so she can come back to him, cannot be.

Either this show is quite the oddity, or it’s fandom's periodic knee-jerk, ass-backwards, charming zeal at play.

The lack of rising development is all the more reason why B/E's grand unveiling demanded perfection. Instead, our first insight into their union is overshadowed by Clarke and the impending Bellarke reunion. B/E isn't central enough to the narrative to warrant focus that would put to rest any discord of illegitimacy. But you know which pair of the two is concentrated on for seven seasons now? Three guesses...

But don't despair. Fandom has decreed, by its own appraisal, the shorthand of kissing and sex has rectified the discrepancy of a complete absence of pertinent on-screen development.

"It's not ideal storytelling," they say, "to exclude B/E's development. But The 100 has historically been a plot-driven, fast-paced, contained drama. It has always evaded expanding on character dynamics to fans' satisfaction.”

The writers have done more to present Josephine and Gabriel as soulmates with less airtime than B/E ever had in total. They don't lack the skill or time to fortify B/E in anyone's mind as the central romance. Jason made a conscious choice not to. Why would he? Does he think the endgame love story of the show's deuteragonist doesn't merit attention to detail by the writing? Or does it seem more likely, it was never his intention for B/E to cross the finish line?

And, for a plot-driven, fast-paced, contained drama, they sure have an awful knack for finding the time to showcase Clarke's kicked puppy reactions to an embracing B/E. We've had three thus far. One for science, one for emphasis, and one to say, "Do you people get it now?"

"Bellarke doesn't make any sense," they say, "if they wanted each other, they'd have gotten together by now."

A long time ago, someone stated, "Lovers are supposed to do that you know and if they don’t do that it means their relationship isn’t romantic if sexual intercourse isn’t added."

And to that, I posed the question, "Where exactly is it written that "if a pairing is not made canon by season [insert arbitrarily chosen number here], it will never be made canon, period?" Was I just absent from fandom class that day and skipped to the lesson on slow-burn ships?" We are going into the final season, and I stand by this question today as I did then. Bellarke could refrain from physical expressions of love and candid confessions to season 17, and their journey could continue to exemplify a love story. Because the absence of either one doesn't preclude two people from falling in love. Nor does the inclusion of either one necessitate two people falling in love.

"Bellarke doesn't make any sense," they say. They say because Bellamy is her dearly beloved, but platonic, best friend.

Well, you've got me there. I'm stumped. How can it be possible for friendship and romantic love to behave as anything but mutually exclusive concepts? It's not as if friendship can be contorted to serve as a foundation for love.

The cornerstones of strong friendships include trust, care, support, devotion, and many other features of a similar nature. Love- deep and genuine love, that is- involves frequent kissing and passionate, vigorous sex. The wilder the display, the stronger the pairing. The dozens of couples, love interests, and sexual liaisons before B/E who have kissed and had sex before dying must not have first consulted the manual for proper protocol.

And the inverse? Once two people fall in love, they cannot fall back to say, a familial connection. No, no, no. Such a regression would be the work of a tragic, reprehensible flaw in the cogs of the universe. Speak nothing of it.

"It doesn't make sense for B/E to break up," they say, "when B/E has stayed together for two seasons sans any indication Bellamy loves Clarke more than Echo, enough to want to leave his loving girlfriend."

How many times has Bellamy tried and failed to honor his commitment to Echo? How many weak attempts are met with a corresponding scene of Bellamy shifting his attention to the girl he tells himself to get over?

Echo leaves for Shallow Valley, his focus immediately turns onto persuading Clarke not to leave his side. He symbolically chooses Echo in the fireside scene by touching her sword. Yet, he looks at his girlfriend for the first time since their separation with the most aloof expression unsuitable for the occasion. No hope to be found anywhere. They share a brief reunion hug, no time for intimacy. He is reunited with Clarke and casts a nervous glance at Echo when bombarded with Clarke's appreciative gaze. Still no time for intimacy between B/E before a decade-long nap, but time can be carved out for a warm, flirty Bellarke reconciliation, complete with intensive heart eyes. No inspired, emotionally wrought, double sunlit embraces for B/E. If Bellamy is going to look out of a window at his future home, he'll either be by himself or snuggling Clarke into his side. There's no place for Echo in the lock of his arms anymore, only room for flanking him in the way loyal lieutenants tend to do. His girlfriend glances over at him as their exploratory team roughly plummets to new territory, and he does the same at Clarke. B/E reconnects lakeside, him asking for a swim with her and leaning into her arms at a campfire. He sits by her side on a swing set, amidst talk of moving their people into an abandoned village. And it's all well and good for B/E, right? They're presenting the front of a happy, unified couple.

Until...Clarke walks away behind his sight, and he leaves Echo's side to seek Clarke's missing presence where the flirting and warm gazes and near confessions are kicked into overdrive. He calls Echo to hear his latest discovery, then proceeds to ignore the hell out of her, communicating exclusively to his co-leader. He stares wistfully at Clarke dancing with her new flavor of the night, cannot stop doing so even while excoriating Echo for her stoicism, expressing his frustration at her inability to fulfill his emotional needs.

He recommits to Echo, as Clarke is kidnapped and her body is stolen, with nary a transition, suggesting we are meant to link the two incidents together. For all his resolve to face the future with Echo, he spends the whole of the next episode with a wary eye on Clarke, to the point that he is the first to realize Clarke is not herself. In the ensuing arc ranging from 6x05 to 6x11, approximately half of the season, what was B/E, again? Was that a thing concurrently happening with Bellamy's Operation: Save My Clarke? Because I seem to be able to recall only Bellarke goodness. Oh, my mistake, there was the consoling hug which, oddly enough, did nothing to soothe him. As evidenced by his choice to grieve alone. No girlfriend he wanted close by for comfort, knowing clear as day she couldn't provide it if she tried. Not with who he just lost.

B/E gets another brief reunion hug, the majority of which is spent with him peering at Clarke. The show saw that hug and raised us an Austenesque-quality counterpart that would do Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy proud.

"B/E endgame is the only sensible outcome," they say, "they love each other so much."

I don't contend they don't love each other. But we are shown two people determined but incapable of snuffing their deep-rooted feelings out of noble propriety, and most importantly, out of needless fear of unrequited love. And another two people who sought- and failed- to keep grasping the wisps of a gentle relationship slipping out of their hands since they left their comfortable space bubble. For anyone in this conundrum to be happy, the only natural course of action is for the latter to call it quits. The writing has been on the wall for too long.

Maybe a single Bellarke scene plucked out of the lineup can be interpreted on its own as platonic buddies being platonic buddies. But when all those individual moments are woven together, what forms is an ornate tapestry with a pattern so vivid, any inane rhetoric involving a hint of the word "platonic" is little more than ludicrous anti drivel transparently cooked up by those wishing a different endgame.

I hope you've enjoyed my second long-winded rant, @sometimesrosy, @jeanie205, @travllingbunny. One born of a teaching moment in which I learn for the umpteenth time it's best to steer clear of Twitter.

#the 100 #bellarke #b/e #c/b/e #my post

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thisblogisalsoboundforglory · 3 years

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WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

Kage Baker’s Company Series

In the Garden of Iden

Sky Coyote

Mendoza in Hollywood

The Graveyard Game

The Life of the World to Come

The Children of the Company

The Machine's Child

The Sons of Heaven

The Empress of Mars

Not Less than Gods

Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

Gods and Pawns

In the Company of Thieves

Ø Science Fiction written by a woman with Asperger’s. Wildly uneven. Main protagonist is female, but there are lots of POV characters, male and female.

Ø Big ideas.

Ø Lots of adventure, some action.

Ø Small doses of humor.

Neil Gaiman

Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)

Neverwhere

Stardust

American Gods

Anansi Boys

The Graveyard Book

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Ø Neil’s books are a road trip with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a baggie full of sativa.

Ø Ideas are incidental. The Milieu’s in charge.

Ø Adventure happens whether you like it or not.

Ø Cosmic humor. The joke’s on us.

Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel Series

Firewatch

Doomsday Book

To Say Nothing of the Dog (and the novel that inspired it – Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)

Blackout/All Clear

Assorted:

The Last of the Winnebagos

Ø Connie loves her historical research. Blackout/All Clear actually lasts as long as the Blitz, but anything in the Oxford Time Travel series is worth reading. Doomsday Book reads like prophecy in retrospect.

Ø One idea: Hi! This is the human condition! How fucking amazing is that?!?

Ø Gut-punch adventure with extra consequences. Background action.

Ø I’d have to say that Doomsday Book is the funniest book about the black death I’ve ever read, which isn’t saying much. To Say Nothing of the Dog is classic farce, though. Girl’s got range.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash (After the apocalypse, the world will be ruled by Home-Owners Associations. Be afraid.)

Cryptonomicon

Anathem

Seveneves

Ø Neal writes big, undisciplined, unfocused books that keep unfolding in your mind for months after you’ve read them. He’s a very guy-type writer, in spite of a female protagonist or two. Seveneves, be warned, starts out brilliant and devolves into extreme meh.

Ø Big. Fucking. Ideas.

Ø Battles, crashes, fistfights, parachute jumps, nuclear powered motorcycles and extreme gardening action. Is there an MPAA acronym for that?

Ø Humor dry enough to be garnished with two green olives on a stick.

Christopher Moore

Pine Cove Series:

Practical Demonkeeping

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Okay, yeah, Christmas. But Christmas with zombies, so that’s all right.)

Fluke (Not strictly Pine Cove, but in the same universe. Ever wonder why whales sing? They’re ordering Pastrami sandwiches. I’m not kidding.)

Death Merchant Chronicles:

A Dirty Job

Secondhand Souls (Best literary dogs this side of Jack London)

Coyote Blue (Kind of an outlier. Overlapping characters)

Shakespeare Series:

Fool

The Serpent of Venice

Shakespeare for Squirrels

Assorted:

Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Cargo cults with Pine Cove crossovers. I have a theory that the characters in this book are direct descendants of certain characters in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.)

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (So I have a favorite first-century wonder rabbi. Who doesn’t?)

Sacre Bleu

Noir

Ø Not for the squeamish, the easily offended, or those who can’t lovingly embrace the fact that the human species is pretty much a bunch of idiots snatching at moments of grace.

Ø No big ideas whatever. Barely any half-baked notions.

Ø Enthusiastic geek adventure. Action as a last resort.

Ø Nonstop funny from beginning to end.

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London

Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

Broken Homes

Foxglove Summer

The Hanging Tree

The Furthest Station

Lies Sleeping

The October Man

False Value

Tales From the Folly

Ø Lean, self-deprecating police procedurals disguised as fantasy novels. Excellent writing.

Ø These will not expand your mind. They might expand your Latin vocabulary.

Ø Crisply described action, judiciously used. Whodunnit adventure. It’s all about good storytelling.

Ø Generous servings of sly humor. Aaronovitch is a geek culture blueblood who drops so many inside jokes, there are websites devoted to indexing them.

John Scalzi

Old Man’s War Series:

Old Man’s War

Questions for a Soldier

The Ghost Brigades

The Sagan Diary

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

After the Coup

The Human Division

The End of All Things

Ø Star Trek with realpolitik instead of optimism.

Ø The Big Idea is that there’s nothing new under the sun. Nor over it.

Ø Action-adventure final frontier saga with high stakes.

Ø It’s funny when the characters are being funny, and precisely to the same degree that the character is funny.

Assorted:

The Dispatcher

Murder by Other Means

Redshirts (Star Trek, sideways, with occasional optimism)

Ø Scalzi abandons (or skewers) his space-opera tendencies with these three little gems of speculative fiction. Scalzi’s gift is patience. He lets the scenario unfold like a striptease.

Ø What-if thought experiments that jolt the brain like espresso shots.

Ø Action/misadventure as necessary to accomplish the psychological special effects.

Ø Redshirts is satire, so the humor is built-in, but it’s buried in the mix.

David Wong/Jason Pargin

John Dies at the End

This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It

What the Hell Did I Just Read?

Ø Pargin clearly starts his novels with a handful of arresting scenes and images, then looses the characters on an unsuspecting world to wander wither they will.

Ø Ideas aren’t as big or obvious as Heinlein, but they are there to challenge all your assumptions in the same way that Heinlein’s were.

Ø Classic action/adventure for anyone raised on Scooby-Doo.

Ø Occasional gusts of humor in a climate that’s predominantly tongue-in-cheek.

Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series

Just One Damned Thing After Another

The Very First Damned Thing

A Symphony of Echoes

When a Child is Born*

A Second Chance

Roman Holiday*

A Trail Through Time

Christmas Present*

No Time Like the Past

What Could Possible Go Wrong?

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings*

Lies, Damned Lies and History

The Great St Mary’s Day Out*

My Name is Markham*

And the Rest is History

A Perfect Storm*

Christmas Past*

An Argumentation of Historians

The Battersea Barricades*

The Steam Pump Jump*

And Now for Something Completely Different*

Hope for the Best

When Did You Last See Your Father?*

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple*

Plan For The Worst

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room

Ø The * denotes a short story or novella. Okay, try to imagine Indiana Jones as a smartassed redheaded woman with a time machine and a merry band of full contact historians. I love history, and I especially love history narrated by a woman who can kick T. Rex ass.

Ø The ideas are toys, not themes. Soapy in spots.

Ø Action! Adventure! More action! More adventure! Tea break. Action again!

Ø Big, squishy dollops of snort-worthy stuff.

Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell Series

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Letter of Mary

The Moor

Jerusalem

Justice Hall

The Game

Locked Rooms

The Language of Bees

The God of the Hive

Beekeeping for Beginners

Pirate King

Garment of Shadows

Dreaming Spies

The Marriage of Mary Russell

The Murder of Mary Russell

Mary Russell's War And Other Stories of Suspense

Island of the Mad

Riviera Gold

The Art of Detection (Strictly speaking, this is in the action!lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli series, but it crosses over to the Sherlock Holmes genre. If you’ve ever wondered how Holmes would deal with the transgendered, this is the book.)

Ø Sherlock Holmes retires to Sussex, keeps bees, marries a nice Jewish girl who is smarter than he is and less than half his age and he’s mentored since she was fifteen in an extremely problematic power dynamic relationship that should repulse me but doesn’t, somehow, because this is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche out there. Mary should have been a rabbi, but it is 1920, so she learns martial arts and becomes an international detective instead. Guest appearances by Conan Doyle, Kimball O’Hara, T.E. Lawrence, Cole Porter, and the Oxford Comma.

Ø Nothing mind-expanding here, unless the levels of meta present in a fictional world that is about how the fictional world might not be as fictional as you thought come as a surprise to anyone in the era of tie-in books, films, tv, interactive social media and RPGs.

Ø If these two geniuses can’t catch the bad guys with their dazzling brilliance, they will happily kick some ass. Adventure takes center stage and the action sequences are especially creative.

Ø Amusement is afoot.

Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Woman Who Died a Lot

Ø In a world where Librarians are revered and Shakespeare is more popular than the Beatles, someone has to facilitate the weekly anger-management sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights, if only to keep them from killing each other before the novel actually ends. That someone is Thursday Next – Literature Cop.

Ø Mind-bending enough to give Noam Chomsky material for another hundred years.

Ø Adventure aplenty. Action? Even the punctuation will try to kill you.

Ø This is a frolicsome look at humorous situations filled with funny people. Pretty much a full house in the laugh department.

Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series/City Watch Arc

Guards! Guards!

Men at Arms

Feet of Clay

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Thud!

Snuff

Raising Steam

Ø If this were a game of CLUE, the answer would be Niccolo Machiavelli in Narnia with a Monty Python. Everything you think you know about books with dragons and trolls and dwarves and wizards is expertly ripped to shreds and reassembled as social satire that can save your soul, even if it turns out you don’t really have one. Do not be fooled by the Tolkien chassis – there’s a Vonnegut-class engine at work.

Ø Caution: Ideas in the Mirror Universe May be Larger Than They Appear

Ø The City Watch arc has plenty of thrilling action sequences. Some other of the fifty-million Discworld novels have less. Every one of them is nonstop adventure. Most of the adventure, however, takes the form of characters desperately trying to avoid thrilling action sequences.

Ø Funny? Even though I’ve read every book in the series at least ten times, I still have to make sure I have cold packs on hand in case I laugh so hard I rupture something.

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zankivich · 5 years

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Dad!Shawn X Black Female Reader: The Banquet

Request: Please continue with the Shawn Mendes x Black reader fics!!! Love them! Maybe something to do with colorism or jealousy from non-POC fans? Thank you!

I’m not sure that I actually did what you asked me to do at all, but this is just sort of what came out when I started writing. I think I could definitely expand and explore a variety of issues with these characters tbh, but I hope you like this one? also a reblog would be lovely if you do. Likes are beautiful but a reblog spreads the content. Thanks friends!

For their five year anniversary he gifts her a foundation. It had been her dream her entire life to open a non-profit for black girls to go into law. He’d spent many nights talking her ear off during finals, or whenever she was stressed with law school, listening to her craft this narrative aloud. She told him how it was a miracle that she ended up in law school, and that so much of it had to do with the women in her life who got her to that point. Mentors and leaders, her aunt who had been the first black female judge in her hometown. She explained to him the barriers that existed for education for black people both to get into education, as well as to succeed within it. Every black person to graduate was a success story, because it meant that they had come through on the other side of a host of oppressions and problems that their white counterparts never had to experience. She wanted to help mitigate that in any way that she could, to create spaces for black girls in particular to excel in a field they might never be encouraged to go into. She was obviously the most incredible woman in the world.

After their daughter, Ella had been born, Shawn couldn’t help but think more and more about his wife’s dream. Mostly because he couldn’t imagine a world where his daughter couldn’t be any damn thing that she wanted, but also with the new found understanding that the life that she would get to live would not be the life of an average girl who looked like her. And if his wife had taught him anything it was that they had a responsibility to the people who didn’t have the privileges that they did. So, he gathers the investors, pools in his own money, and names the foundation after his wife for their wedding anniversary. This is how they end up hosting their first benefit dinner. It’s completely unlike any of the ones he’d ever been to in the past. Instead of snobby, old, rich, white people, it’s a host of diversity that better reflects the world they live in. Y/n had reached out to all of the black female lawyers she knew across the country, and they had come--and brought friends--in droves. Shawn had just barely reached out to some of the people he knew in the industry and a similar result had occurred. He knew the day he looked at the guest list to see Oprah there--a name definitely not in his contacts--that something magical was occurring.

The night of the benefit there was a black carpet, because his wife was all about symbolism, and the media had turned up ready to ask everyone questions about the event that night. His wife was right beside him--her body draped in the most beautiful, bright yellow gown that hit right below her collarbones and fell down in waves. It was his favorite color on her by far, and it only added to pride of being on her arm that night. He might have pulled the initial things together to make it happen, but it was his wife’s night through and through. Little did he know how much they would have to fight for that.

“You look absolutely magnificent.” He mumbled as they headed for the carpet.

She had fau loxs put in for the occasion and they fell all the way to her waist in a very Rihanna like fashion. He was so in love with her it was ridiculous.

Ella was with them that night at his wife’s insistence that they if they were going to have a foundation for black girls to learn about law, then they should probably bring their black daughter with them. Ella sat on her father’s hip, clad in the very beautiful dress that she’d picked out all by herself, face hidden from the cameras as they walked. They stood together, his arm touching the small of her back as they allowed the photographers to go crazy. She smiled a special smile for him though and squeezed at his arm.

“You look good too, baby. I told you, black looks good on you. And not just when it’s me.” She smirked smoothing out his suit.

“That joke never gets old either.” He chuckled.

He walks just slightly to the side of her to make sure he doesn’t step on her dress, something that had taken him years of practice, and shifted Ella’s weight slightly in his arms.

“You okay, honey?”

She tightened her arms around her father's neck. “It’s too bright daddy.”

There was an irrational feeling in his chest that told him he should break every camera in the venue if it meant taking the frown off his little girl’s face. His wife would call that absolutely ridiculous though, so he didn’t voice it.

“I know baby girl. It’s okay. You don’t have to look at the cameras. We’re just here to support Mommy tonight. And as soon as we're done in here, we’ll got inside and daddy will find you a snack okay?”

Y/n rolled her eyes playfully. “It’s a dinner, Shawn. Don’t promise that girl a snack.”

“Our baby girl is hungry, y/n. This is our banquet, I will find my baby a snack.”

“Oh lord, c’mon you two!”

Shawn had been doing interviews so long, that he couldn’t quite remember a time when he didn’t know how to do them anymore. So, red--or black--carpets were less stressful than they had once been. His wife had never gotten the media training that he’d received, but that didn’t stop her from being poised and brilliant and wonderful. Especially in the face of ignorance.

The first interviewer didn’t acknowledge his wife, or even the foundation really, at all. They asked if he would be playing tonight, how he’d found time to start a foundation in the middle of a world tour, and when he explained that the work was all of his wife’s they almost blatantly ignored him. By the third interview he saw the same look on her face that appeared every time she got followed around a store by a security guard even when they were together, or the time the cops had somehow gotten called on her when they hadn’t moved in together yet and she was visiting his condo in Toronto. It wasn’t one of disbelief, but one of resignation, of acceptance. He hated that look on her face. It never failed to break his heart, and then to make him incredibly angry. By the fourth interview, he was completely and utterly over it.

“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Mendes. First question of the night how does it feel to have started your own foundation?”

Y/n turned politely to him expecting him to answer on behalf of them, and he squeezed reassuringly at her hip.

“No, babe you answer.”

She smiled warmly. “It’s a dream come true for the both of us. I’ve wanted to help little girls who look like me my whole life, and it’s an honor to get to this really necessary work.”

“Of course. And Shawn this has been quite the year for you, two-time grammy winner, successful world tour, another successful album. How do you find time to manage it all?”

“Actually tonight is about the work my wife is doing. It’s not about me, so I don’t really want to answer that.” He blinked. “Do you have anymore questions for her?”

His wife turned that eyebrow of hers that was capable of at least sixty different expressions on him. If he had to guess, and he’d grown good at guessing in their years of being together, this particular eyebrow was saying something along the lines of, “okay, sir, I see you!”

The interview falters a little bit, moving through card after card, in hopes of not fucking things up further.

“A--Actually I do.. I’m wondering what the impact of being in a interracial marriage has on the work that you do both for the foundation and in your daily life.”

“I uh...For me it doesn’t erase my blackness. It doesn’t erase my child’s blackness. It serves as an eye opener for sure. Sometimes I cannot tell if people in his industry are ignoring me because I’m black, or because I’m a woman, or some hybrid of the two. And I know that there are always going to be people who don’t get it, who look at the work that we’re doing and say that it’s unnecessary. I am privileged in that I married someone who does get it, and on top of that is willing to put himself at the forefront of change for myself, for our daughter, for anyone who looks like us. And that’s all that I could ever ask for. That’s all that matters to me.”

She took his hand and squeezed it lovingly in her own. When they leave that interviewer he can’t focus on anything but her because she’s truly just that incredible of a human being. And there’s a feeling in his gut that it will be never be enough. That he could work twenty-four hours a day and yell at every interviewer about the injustices that people were facing every day, and he still wouldn’t change everyone’s mind. He could never fully erase the burden for her, and yet here she was treating him like he’d done something grand. It meant the world to him, but it also just made him want to do more, whatever that meant. He thought that maybe that night was a good first start though.

That night, after everything went off without a hitch, he pulled her to the dance floor, Ella still wrapped around his neck, but now with the addition of his wife squeezing her from the other side too. With the two ladies in his life, there’s nothing more he could ask for. Ella’s asleep on one side of his neck and she’s pressed lovingly to the other. He’s on cloud nine.

“I love you so much.” He whispered kissing at her hair. “You’re so beautiful, baby.”

She smiled up at him, the whiteness of her teeth a wondrous glint against her brilliant skin.

“I love you, Shawn. Thank you for making tonight happen.”

“Hey, you made tonight happen okay? You put all of this together. Not me. You deserve the credit, you hear me?”

Her eyes brightened and her smile only got bigger and his heart only got heavier in his chest because how could anyone ever love anyone the way that he loved her?

“I hear you. Now kiss me, dammit.”

That was one wish he could definitely grant.

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