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People see themselves in movies, that’s half the point of stories altogether let alone movies specifically. Of course, there’s escapism, seeing the kind of person you want to be or admire but everyone sees characters and feels a bond of sameness with them now and then. You’re no exception.
You see characters who fall for another troll and feel a tangled mess of things for that person. You want to be the one who has some dramatic or poetic thing happen and everything slots neatly into one quadrant and you get the happy ever after. That’s one path for that character, but the other… the one that you really see yourself in are the ones where that doesn’t happen and the character becomes a cautionary tale. Get your shit straight or die alone, probably culled by drones. They die sad deaths, either with people sadly commenting that they never even got their quadrants right or they’re just thrown under the scuttlebuggy. Sometimes they’re the joke character, not the comic relief who is beloved and makes the jokes but rather the one who is the joke.
You’re a joke character.
Still, you love movies. You love romance and you’re used to the sting of seeing yourself in them like that. Naturally then when first starting to really bond with Dave on the meteor you watch movies together. You get to explain things about Alternian cinema, explain tropes, several times you have to explain romance and quadrants to him and basic words that you guess he doesn’t get.
“She’s kinda hot.” Dave says idly, his feet up on the coffee table.
“The blueblood actress? Yeah, she does more indie films but she’s pretty popular.” you agree.
“I mean the girl giving her all the security details over the mic is cute too in a girl nerd kinda way.” Dave adds.
Yeah, you liked her too. Dave keeps watching the movie, sees the part where the olive datamancer’s nondescript feelings drag on almost comically until the point where her love interest makes out with her new matesprit right in front of her.
“Wow, what a fuckin’ dick move.” Dave sneers and you wrench your ganderbulbs from the screen to look at him.
“She obviously liked her and fine if she didn’t feel the same but that’s just mean.” Dave says, waving a hand at the screen.
“Well, she… she hadn’t made her interest plain in any quadrant.” you mumble because it’s the reason it happened, it’s what’s happened to you before with Terezi.
“That’s shit. If they mutually liked each other then the right thing is to either work out something that works for both of them or call it a day not just mack on the next person going right in front of her.” Dave argues.
Leaning back into the sofa near him you can almost feel Dave’s conviction that this is wrong radiating outwards to you.
“Sure, I get it. Troll romance is different and better or whatever. But don’t you guys ever just catch feelings for someone without totally getting it?” Dave asks, looking over at you.
Does it happen? He asks you that and then looks at you like he gives a shit about your opinion. He saw the character that’s your type of troll and liked her best, was emotionally attracted to her as well as physically. The stupid joke character made to dig at people like you. And he asks you that with his soft, fangless human mouth in a displeased pout, a ghost of an expression filtering through the walls he has up around himself. Do people just get feelings for other people, he asks as he brazenly sits there all too-warm blooded, cullably delicate but unfairly tough too.
“Yeah that- that happens.” you say in a voice that you hope isn’t as strangled as it feels.
The next time someone like you is on screen they’re killed off thoughtlessly and Dave rapidly loses interest.
“Everyone else in this movie is a psycho now that the brown guy died and explosions don’t even work like that I’m sure.” Dave groans.
It happens with movie after movie. You start anticipating it, hoping for it. Asking Dave in advance what he thinks of the people like you because he seems drawn to them. Of course, it happens again, you always as Dave put it ‘catch feelings’ for people you really like. You look forward to your movie get-togethers, to seeing his genuine reactions to movies as he relaxes more around you. You can see that he’s smart, for all he pretends that he’s not. You can see the doubt he hides between fake confidence and irony. As per fucking usual you can’t nail your stupid feelings down to any one quadrant and it’s the same shit all over again. You’re so done with it, so done.
You might not be great at hiding that frustration with yourself either.
“Augh, that’s- did they need to focus on the death that long?” Dave asks with a grimace.
You glare at the bloodied remains of troll Will Smith’s character on the screen.
“Geez, that just came out of nowhere. Your planet’s movies are fucked up and I witnessed way too many saw movies in my formative years.” Dave snorts.
“Yeah well he had it coming, if he’d stayed pale for his moirail she would have been there to help him but he vacillated to red and she left so he got fed to the woodchipper.” you hiss, hating him and yourself. Your claws are digging into your palms tightly.
“Dude, I thought you liked troll Will Smith.” Dave says in soft surprise.
“That’s not the point.”
“Okay,” Dave says and leans back in the cushion of the sofa to look at you, “but if she really loved him then she’d have stuck with him. I know you go on about troll romance being superior and I might not be a connoisseur of human romance movies but if you drop someone the moment that its inconvenient for you then you’re a shitty girlfriend or whatever.”
He stands up from the seat and stretches, ignoring the rest of the action on screen that’s now shifted to the main pitch pair who are finally getting together. He’s lost interest in the movie now that the guy who can’t hold his quadrants is dead.
You can’t hold your quadrants for shit and you have feelings up to here, not to mention that you do like being around Dave for all you frequently want to throttle him for being ignorant. Maybe… maybe he wouldn’t get tired of your inability to settle on one shade of romance, maybe things could turn out okay and you won’t be the joke. You could avoid dying painfully and insignificantly and instead BE the main romance, not the cautionary tale.
“Hey, Dave?” you say quickly.
“Yeah?”
“Did you like troll Will Smith’s character?” you ask hesitantly.
“I’m not sure anyone likes him as much as you do, but sure he was nice. Not in a gay way of course like- ha, can you imagine? Wait I can’t remember if anyone explained being gay or if I’ve just rambled about it a lot in a no homo way or whatever.” Dave says hastily. Ah, yes, this.
“John explained homosexuality to me.” you assure him.
“That’s a five word horror story right there. Nope, leaving, not doing that. Bye dude.” Dave groans and floats away.
You probably need to look into that from more reputable sources but he’s willing to navigate your shit at least theoretically. You could do this. You could have a real romance of your own perhaps. Just you and Dave.