Thinking about love in season 2 of The Bear and how Carmy seems to conceptualize "love" and "fun" as opposites — because for him, they historically have been. It's something I really noticed in Fishes (2x06): how vocally and genuinely everyone in his family — including in-laws and functionally adoptive members like Richie and the Fak siblings — loves each other, but also how deeply entwined that love is with stress and chaos and criticism.

Natalie is nicknamed, by people who love her, after a mistake she made years ago and which is still held over her head when she tries to help in the kitchen. Donna loves her children and is loved by them in turn, but she's constantly on the edge of a meltdown, unable to offer or accept support. She spends hours cooking them a beautiful dinner, and then she drives a car through the wall. Michael reminds Carmy he loves him and tries to give him advice, and then he gets in a massive fight with Uncle Lee at the dinner table and starts throwing forks. Cooking is clearly so important to his family, but doing this activity they love, and especially doing it around the people they love, so rarely results in a feeling of "amusement or enjoyment."

And so it's no surprise, really, that the career Carmy loves is one that gives him panic attacks and made him throw up before work every day, or that he (and Natalie and Sydney) not only decide on such a radical transformation of the restaurant but give themselves a ridiculously sort timeline to complete it. He's stressed and miserable a lot of the time, but is it really something he loves if he doesn't feel that way?

If you're still up for talking about your Spider-Man AU, I would love to hear more about your ideas for Connors! I really liked that you kept him and Peter having a close relationship from university (something that I wish had been true for the game, but oh well) and that he seems to be an actual character with his own thoughts and agency rather than just showing up to move the plot forward and drop exposition, so I'd love to know more about things like his backhistory and relationship with Peter, what's going on between him and Norman and the symbiote, the smaller focus you mentioned regarding his conflict over what he did, and anything else you want to talk about!

I'm always up for talking about it!!

I feel the same, it was a shame that Peter and Connors didn't know each other personally outside the whole Spider-Man - Lizard shebang. Which is why I wanted Connors and Pete to have a closer relationship, so Connors saving Peter didn't seem out of obligation, but more so of him being emotionally invested in Peter's well-being. Him saving Peter using the symbiote was more of a "spur of the moment" thing when he wasn't thinking clearly, all he wanted was to keep Peter alive since he grew on him during their university days, and he was something like a nephew to him. If Peter had time, he stayed with Connors after classes helping him out in the lab and worked as his teacher assistant for a short while. (ngl I took that from the game because I thought it was Connors that Peter helped with teaching before the second game got released)

Curt and his family were brought into the bunker by Norman who assigned him to a project where he was supposed to study the symbiotes to be able to defeat them and/or use them as weapons. He's conflicted about it, but he knows that if he refuses to cooperate with him, he'll kick him and his family out of the bunker. The safety of Martha and Billy is his top priority, which unfortunately results in Norman having some control over him. But he doesn't have much choice since all of them being kicked out of the bunker would most likely result in their deaths. Despite Norman acting all like "ahhh I built these bunkers, so humanity and our brilliant minds survive" he's still a manipulative corpo weasel.

Him giving the symbiote to Peter didn't halt the project - quite the opposite, it pushed it further into the "using them as a weapon" direction and before Peter left, he thoroughly scanned him and asked him to do some physical exams. Throughout the story, Peter's group would discover other bunkers with scientists and people living in them, so he'd stay in contact with Peter and monitor the symbiote's effect on his body while simultaneously working on a "cure" on how to separate them without killing either of them. The cure is not what Norman asked of him to do, but it's something he's working on in secret out of guilt.

So, despite being a side character, he's pretty important. Would he have successfully created a cure? Hmm maybe. But it wouldn't be the deus ex machina he was hoping for. That's my way of saying "idk if I want a happy or sad ending"