Airing the place out a bit

[staranise]

I recently renamed this community--it used to be smh_team, and I've been wanting it to have a tin that says what it does on it for a long time. However, for renames to work, the community can't have any members, so I briefly removed all its members, used a rename token, and then re-added everyone.

I'm glad it's getting more activity! Hopefully soon I can stop running around with my hair on fire and get back to fandom. (Especially since the most recent update, um... made me... ship Nurseydex when it was previously my NOTP? It's complicated.)

Comments

[onlysmallwings]

It does make sense!

"So now the team has just wearily conceded that for some stupid reason, Dex and Nursey will not be mediated; they're committed to dancing this dance with each other."

That's what I was missing. Their friends would, of course, have tried to mediate in all the ways. Obviously it didn't work, so they've accepted the NurseyDex dance. But if they were like that with everyone else, they would have a different dynamic with the team.

Dumb hockey boys with too many feelings.

[cathyw]

Chowder tried to mediate right from the start! But even Bitty couldn't get them on the same page.

[onlysmallwings]

And Dex and Nursey have been really bad at communicating with each other from the beginning; they're just constantly misreading each other or making snap judgments that may or may not be true.

But they wouldn't work on the team with Bitty and Chowder and the rest if they were fundamentally assholes. Poor communication does a fair imitation of assholery but isn't quite the same thing.

[staranise]

OH MY GOD, I totally missed that! Yeah, it's such a perfect metaphor.

Communication styles can be changed, but it requires things toxic masculinity often prohibits, like self-reflection, a willingness to question your first assumptions, and access to tenderer emotions than anger and dominance games. You have to try to level and express yourself, instead of trying to "win".

Will Dex and Nursey be able to pull it off? Good question! In Bitty's soft bro world, it seems a little more possible than usual.

[kaberett]

Wait you mean the way that JACK was a GRUMPY ARSEHOLE and then started Getting Over Himself and Talking More???

(are NurseyDex... Pimms?)

[kaberett]

expanding on this a bit: ARE NURSEY AND DEX a JACK AND KENT DYNAMIC only GIVEN THE CHANCE TO DO BETTER, in that instead of being in the shitshow that is the NHL they're in SMH, and they've got social support and an even vaguely healthy environment? So many of the ways in which Jack & Kent went wrong are plausibly to do with the toxicity they were drowning in, of wanting to be good to each other and not knowing how and not having any opportunity to learn -- but here, in the Haus, are some other boys, with other-but-similar issues, who get the chance to do better.

[rhysiana]

I think a lot of us (ie, N/D shippers who've been with it since it was crack on par with early Patater) arrived at that "they're committed to this dance and refused to be mediated" conclusion when Bitty tweeted about them having to sit next to each other on the bus, so this vibe has been explored in N/D fics for a while, we just all assumed they'd get over the screaming at each other stage earlier than canon seems to have let them. I'm looking forward to your take on it! (And cautiously to canon's take now, maybe? We'll see.)