zuko is already a hilarious character but he becomes even funnier if you give him a crush on sokka

Based on that last post, I was thinking about the Theory Of Romance Novels (especially as found in Romancing the Beat) that the components of a romance story fill some lack or need in each other.

So basically the void in Jaz's life that Sasha is filling is a: job dissatisfaction which is caused by b: the fatal american need to have a pretty good time (desire for Adventure and Shenanigans)

The romance novel part is from Jaz's POV so I figured that out pretty early on, even if I don't know that I ever made it explicit in any of my notes or anything. I mean that's why I have already roughed out the scene where Sasha grandly presents Jaz zeir very own ship to captain and Jaz is like "Oh. It turns out I don't want this actually." And then when ze tries to explain that like. Being a mercenary owner-captain is not going to be nearly as exciting without him around, Sasha is like AAAAA okay this is objectively nuts it has been three months but marry me? Like, the Thematic Point of that scene is pretty clear even if I do end up changing parts of it later, I think the bones of that scene are going to stick around. I have in fact referred to it in installments set in the future lmao.

But I just now thought about what Sasha is getting from Jaz here, which is mostly: LESS KAVAGORAN. Part of Miles Vorkosigan's problem is how Very Barrayaran he is, and his struggles with reconciling those values with his objective inability to embody parts of them. He does this with increasingly unhealthy coping mechanisms until he literally fries his brain and trashes his career, and I think it's pretty important for Miles specifically that he doesn't meet the future Lady Vorkosigan until he has become Even More Disabled and unavoidably so--and in a Very Barrayaran position that is simultaneously NOT REMOTELY the career path of his father or grandfather.

But Sasha necessarily (in order to get him to be more willing to acknowledge how into Jaz he is) (Miles is transparently into Bel he's just mired in internalized homophobia THIS IS TEXT retroactive text but text!!!) is a little older and had a little more success Being An Officer, it's just that his moral compass wouldn't allow him to. Be part of a military organization. Which is kind of a problem for a Kavagoran. But Sasha also spent more (or at least paid more attention to) time on Gnilles, plus he made it through the Academy, which I refuse to believe is anything other than a hotbed of furtive bicurious exploration that everyone studiously pretends does not happen, so Sasha is not nearly as concerned about being into men or nonbinary people as Miles is when he meets Jaz.

But importantly, he still has to make the Wild Series of Decisions that leads to him inventing a fake mercenary troupe and suborning an entire ship until everything snowballs out of control and he solves a civil war, so he's still Having A Time. He feels out of place in Kavagoran society, much like Miles frequently did as a youth, except this isn't youthful growing pains, this is...him taking a moral stand and a career hit and not regretting that, which kind of DOES make him regret the fact that he's planned his whole life out around a thing he's not sure he believes in as much as he thought he did. He's Too Old-Fashioned for the modern Kavagoran military (believes too much in honor and morality, which he chalks up to Being !Vor, but is really like. Pretty specific to a Certain Type of nobility who understand the Spider-Man Principle, which is not actually the entire nobility--either on Kavagor or Barrayar!) but also Sasha is Too Modern for traditional Kavagoran society (visibly disabled, absolutely reliant on modern medical technology to live any semblance of an independent life) (i mean not anymore, most of his accessibility needs now are like. extremely old technology like "joint braces" and "cane"). He's feeling at a loss! And useless! He's too Gnillesian for Kavagor but still too Kavagoran for Gnilles, and really, it's a nice planet but he's not going to build a life there! Even if it is Part Of Him!

And while shuffling through this crisis of identity he runs across Jean, a tunnel pilot who is ready to go down with the obsolete ship, and is like, Oh no this loser is My People. Plus the cyborg/disability resonance with Jean, who has literally been obsoleted by his assistive technology becoming obsolete, and was definitely being talked about like he was human garbage (as much as Gnillesians talk like that about anyone, which is more than they would claim). Sasha does the same exact scam Miles does (why fix what isn't broken, especially since it can be Humorous Backstory for why he has become a con man) and is suddenly saddled with a need to Make Money, which he has. Never attempted.

He also picks up Dimitri, who is the foil to the OTHER part of Sasha's predicament, which is: he deserted, yes, technically in the heat of battle, yes, but also, he was given a criminal order he refused to carry out and couldn't think of another way to handle the situation. Unlike Sasha, Dimitri is not a noble with connections; he's just some prole who did well in the engineering corps. He deserts to save his skin and his morals, and Sasha is like, Oh no THIS loser is ALSO My People.

(Helen gets to have the cultural knee-jerk revulsion of Dimitri as a deserter, especially since she is resentful that she isn't allowed to join up even though she would literally be better than half the fucking assholes in the military. She's unable to get even a nod of recognition from the military apparatus, and Dimitri THREW IT AWAY. She is a lot more sympathetic when she learns more about the criminal order, and conflicted about the dissonance, even though it's personal in a different way for her than for Sasha. She also gets concrete confirmation that he's Not Like Other Kavagoran Men, since around a bunch of galactics and hitting it off with Jaz, Dimitri is very chill about things like women with jobs, women soldiers, queer people, etc. He's...less immediately cool about Sasha's disabilities but he's trying? It's condescending and unhelpful, but still better than most Kavagorans' reaction. At which point she's like...okay Dimitri say more about the fact that you have a thing for me.)

But while Sasha is more okay with his queerness and his weird half/nothing cultural identity, and he's gotten better at working within his physical limitations, he's still, like, closeted about his disabilities. As much as he can be when it's visible that he's Not Right--he doesn't use his cane, he dresses to hide his leg brace or any other braces he needs, he tries not to call attention to his height, he does still also get his clothes tailored to "correct" his asymmetries, etc. He's constantly downplaying his needs and differences, mostly because of Kavagoran attitudes, but also like tbh most galactics who aren't Gnillesian are also still pretty ableist. He (feels he) gets more respect and better results when he Puts On A Brave Face and tries to look as "normal" as possible.

It really helps that Jaz is immediately thirsty for him TBH. Like, Jaz is Objectively Attractive, and also specifically attractive to Sasha, and ze is down so bad. Ze is practically vibrating with how hard ze's holding back asking to suck him off. (And, when they do get together, continues to be Very Enthusiastic while also actively attempting to accomodate him before he asks. Like, ze double checks how much force ze can use in normal things like "flipping them over on the bed". Ze asks what positions are easier for him before he hurts himself pretending he can do something. Ze asks about his comfort levels with his assistive devices and other parts of his body being touched, and doesn't push him [until ze knows him much better and is more capable of judging when he's being conservative out of shame].)

And it helps that Jaz has a non-normative body. Like, ze's totally normal to zemself, and to Sasha, and to Helen and Sasha's family (...not the Baron. is the Baron dead yet? I think so. Someone should definitely make a tasteless joke about this killing him.) but is Not Normal to Kavagor, and frankly to most galactics. Like, ambis are definitely the most well-represented third gender, people know about them, but there are few enough of them that leave Gnilles that most people don't know one personally and have never met one. Even on Gnilles, they're a minority. A large, visible minority that most Gnillesians would proclaim their pride in, but...mathematically, we know that's not true, don't we? Ambis are not half of the population of Gnilles, as they would be if everyone let chance decide the sex of their baby. They're not even an even third of the population, as they would be in a true gender ternary. They're like a quarter of the population, and most ambis are born to families that are either not fiddling with their embryos or already have ambis in their immediate family. Jaz is marked out as different in most places, despite having grown up thinking of zemself as totally normal.

And by the time Sasha meets zem, ze's been out in the galaxy for nearly ten years, Being A Minority and having to baby people through seeing zem naked. Yet, far from attempting to hide it, or blend in, ze is almost aggressively nonchalant about it. Like, ze is so Not Making A Big Deal About This that it almost shames people around zem into being cool. Ze's totally even and chill about people saying wildly offensive shit, just like "Interesting, can you expand on that?" like people aren't being weird. Ze is matter of fact about correcting misconceptions. Ze doesn't often get worked up (in public) about people being dumbasses, but ze is also not altering zeir behavior about it; ze is going to keep being openly zemself regardless of how other people feel about it. If you cannot deal with someone in the locker room wearing a sports bra and a jockstrap, that's your fucking problem, not zeirs.

And that strategy, of Pointedly Normalizing Zemself, works fine for zem. It also makes it clear when people are being unreasonable that they are the ones being unreasonable, not Jaz. Sasha will adopt more of that attitude moving forward, starting with being pan and having an ambi spouse who is very much not his wife, and moving on into using his cane in public or wearing clothes that don't conceal his braces. Why would he not use his cane? His leg's acting up and not using it will only make things worse. Why are you looking at him like that? If you don't have anything to say, at least get out of the way, he needs slightly more room to maneuver than people without mobility aids.

Jaz has also had to grapple with the contradiction of Gnillesian technology enabling passive eugenics. Like I said, ambis are not the proportion of the population they are genetically designed to be. Few people actively say they wouldn't have a baby runt, but few people choose one, if they're not already an Ambi Family. Most Gnillesians "just happen" to want girls or boys. Like most Gnillesians "just happen" to want hearing babies, and babies without developmental disabilities. There are ways the Gnillesian medical profession (with guidance and, let's face it, pressure, from the disability communities) try to limit this, but there is a fair argument to be made that screening for embryos with conditions that would endanger the viability of the infant or the health of a mother (even though few babies are carried to term in an embedded womb) is necessary. There are things they won't tell parents about unless asked, and there are things that basically never had tests developed (because people were like THE ONLY POSSIBLE USE FOR THIS IS EUGENICIST), but it's really hard to correct a societal problem on an individual level. Every individual (or couple or polycule or whatever) parent has fair and valid reasons to feel they could not care for certain kinds of babies.

There are still fewer runts born than there should be. There are still fewer little people born than there should be. There are still fewer deaf babies born than there should be.

Jaz is not unreservedly for all Gnillesian advances and norms, because some of them are bad. Ze is part of communities (ambi and queer) that are critical of some aspects of Gnillesian culture, for reasons that aren't as in your face as similar issues on Kavagor and other "less developed" planets.

Importantly, ze is also willing to fight back against those societal issues, even when they seem insurmountable. Less so for zeir own sake, but ze is super willing to fight people about being ableist or sexist, and Sasha feels more equipped to fight people for being binarist and cissexist on Jaz's behalf. They have each other's backs, and Jaz provides the support and security on top of the inspiration for Sasha to draw a line in the sand and say, no, I'm not budging on this. You move.

Lmao I think to some extent Sasha makes Jaz feel adventurous and exciting, while Jaz makes Sasha feel safe. Sasha's going to get into messes, into which Jaz will eagerly follow him, and together, they can clean them up.

Jaz would also be extremely amused by the idea that ze's providing the safety and security in their relationship. Yeah ze's so stable lmao (but Sasha has always had external stability--he has a rich and powerful family, or he wouldn't have survived to be an adult who doesn't feel comfortable being unreservedly himself; Jaz has always been unreservedly zemself, which is part of why ze was restless even while doing the objectively high-risk mercenary work.)