yesterday was. a lot

Jetko?

YESSSSS.

jetko my beloved.

out of all my atla ships i think these two have the most to overcome in order to be together. Zuko, who although only did these things because he was a misguided and abused kid who didnt know anything other than than the propoganda he was taught, was an imperialist and literally burned down at least one village. he upheld fire nation views all throughout book one and his actions did a lot of harm to the world. so out of all the issues jetko has working against him, fixing his past actions and unlearning propoganda is def at the top of the list. the fire nation hurt jet big time, and thats a HUGE obstacle for them to over come. Jet on the other hand has to work on channelling his outrage towards the fire nation and dealing with his own trauma in a way that doesnt involve... ‘harming’ civillians for lack of a better word. he was traumatized and was forced to be an adult and look after a boatload of children way too young. he didnt know any better so its understandable why he did what he did. theyre both teenagers. they are both children. neither of them really knew any better and they both need to learn and overcome these obstacles. and it kind of seems impossible to some people because many people believe that jet was hurt too much by the fire nation to ever forgive zuko and (my least favorite take) jet is racist towards fire nation citizens (FUCK OFF. LITERALLY FUCK OFF ppl who call jet racist piss me off so much. he was oppressed by the fire nation and fought for justice against them. the fire nation were literally oppressing p much everyone in the entire world. racist jet is the DUMBEST take right alongside homophobic katara. i will tolerate none of this jet slander in my blog. i love him alright?)

i got a lil sidetracked. where was i.

RIGHT. ppl who dont like jetko sometimes think that these afformentioned issue would hold them bsck from ever being a good couple and to that i say: haha no.

these two are two of the most stubborn characters in atla. they are the most determined characters and most proactive when it comes to getting what they want. they never give up. and when it comes to eachother? if they wanna be with each other than goddammit they will make it work. i hc them as having a rocky start. maybe being on again off again for a lil bit while theyre still growing and sorting themselves out and finding themselves as people. and yeah zuko being fire nation and jet being hurt by the fire nation is gonna be an issue, but i truly believe that they can overcome it solely based on how passionate and determined they both as as characters.

theyre very similar in the sense that they seek justice and fairness in the world. theyve both been traumatized by the fire nation (granted in very very very different ways) but i think they can grow and heal together.

and i think they can also just be themselves with one another too. when they first met jet bonded with zuko immediately because he could tell he was an outcast and they worked together so fucking well they knew what each other was thinking. they see eachother. and they understand each other.

i think they have such good potential and when written in a well thought out way they are one of the most amazing dynamics.

however. one of the WORST THINGS about the way jetko is written sometimes is the toxic ex jet trope (hello zukka nation i am talking primarily to you because this is where i see it the most because zukka is my top ship but lordy lordy do it got some issues. i love zukka but omg is toxic ex jet a problem here)

jet is not fucking abusive. lets get that straight. just because he fought zuko in ba sing se for (CORRECTLY) assuming he was a firebender (yeah he probs shouldnt have attacked him with swords in a public setting but also: he was traumatized and lied to and hes an impulsive teenage boy. that doesnt excuse the fact that yes jet also did some shitty things but like,,, it explains it. remember kids its good to critique your fav characters and you dont have to agree with me with anything i say this is all just my opinion) jet is not abusive, and using him to write toxic jetko fics or toxic past jetko is not only incredibly insulting to jet and the ship as a whole, but it often is used to reduce zuko to a little uwu-protect-me-im-soft-and-weak-and-cant-fight-for-myself boy. zuko is not that. not at all. ive said it once and i will say it again: the infantilization of zuko as an asian man is a racist take and we need to address it.

if you wanna make jet and zuko have a messy breakup for your fic GO FOR IT. i have no issue with that. but if the only way you can create the messy break up is by making jet an abusive asshole (sometimes even a rapist which WHAT THE FUCK??? why. just. why. what about jet would make you think ‘oh this guys a rapist’ literally goodbye. ppl r weird for that) than maybe you shouldnt be writing past jetko.

sorry for that messy rant oops

back to whag i like about them :) ending on a positive note because they deserve it

i believe that while they would probs have issues as teenagers, i think once they were older and reconnected and like, fully know who they are. they would be GREAT. their communication as seen on the boat was top tier and this would translate so fuckin well into a relationship.

i love jetko and i think jet gets too much hate from the fandom sometimes.

hey i’m super sry 2 bother ive just been struggling and i know u understand how i feel..i’ve never been this bad in my life. i feel so stupid agonizing over smth like my physical appearance but my reflection genuinely makes me nauseous and throws me into a breakdown each time i see it. i cant help but feel like id much rather kill myself than spend the rest of my miserable existence being so revolting and grotesque. i hate being conventionally unattrctive- going out in public is just the worst:(

hey angellll i'm sorry 2 hear you're dealing w this rn. you're not bothering me either, it's cool. :(( also i got your other anon and don't worry, i didn't think you were calling me ugly djekdkekk,, but i mean i AM lol. and i can definitely relate to feeling viscerally disgusting in your own skin......you're not over exaggerating, i promise. you are always going to have the right to feel a certain way about something that seems to dictate so much of your life. countless women are going through it. i struggle with this every single day myself and i honestly don't have all of the answers of even half of them, unfortunately. and sometimes nothing can calm me down from the shame i feel about being who i am, but here are a few thoughts/ideas that soothe me and may soothe you if you allow them to:

1. our perception of beauty is always being manipulated. they keep moving the goal posts and narrowing the standards to get us to chase these totally false ideals, purely because it makes money. that's it. they plant the insecurity, market a fake 'solution', and profit. when we look in the mirror a life time of conditioning looks back at us and the only way to get around it is to be consistently aware of that fact. once you begin examining and questioning why certain features are seen as attractive and others aren't, you realize that none of it really holds any ground. it has very little to do with our bodies, and everything to do with controlling them. it's all the result of a never ending advertisment, and engaging with it for too long is certainly going to exhaust you and fuck up your self perception. the way you see yourself is not as accurate as you think.

2. we are all going to be old and therefore conventionally unattractive someday any way. a defining factor of this game they force us to play is that we will never win. due to circumstance, or time, or just cause we're human. seems like for women we're not allowed to reach a day over 40 without being ridiculed for it. but i really do believe that getting older affords a certain amount of freedom. when you get to that point in your life, you're going to know yourself so much more than you do at the moment. your perspective WILL be different. you're not going to be basing your worth off of how you look because you'll have lived what you're capable of, and it's so much more than.......appearing a certain way for a moment in time. curating a life worth living pales in comparison to looking flawless. and i know it seems like you can't do that because you feel so gross, but you can - insecurity doesn't have to stop you from putting your best foot forward. you are worthy because you're here. you deserve to live because you are alive. at the end of the day, you don't have to like yourself, but you have to like BEING yourself. you have to learn how to enjoy your hobbies and opportunities more than you hate your skin or your face or whatever.

3. your body is here to experience and relate with the tangible world. it is the vessel with which you are able to walk, talk, love, eat, play, and enjoy. it is very very unconcerned with being palatable to the masses. ultimately, that is not what you exist for. it always comes back to that, no matter how much the world demands a performance of you - you don't have to give one. even if the so called audience doesn't like it. it takes time to truly accept that, i still can't. but working on neutralising the self is key. if you can't love yourself, just acknowledge yourself. these are my hands that allow me to create. these are my eyes that allow me to see. they are doing their job. they are okay. they can't be right or wrong. they just are.

4. self destructive thoughts are always over dramatic, always temporary, and often entirely untrue. it's ok to experience those urges, but do your best to find the line between having them and acting on them. it's alright if it takes a while to learn how. as long as you're attempting. that's all that matters.

5. try to consciously practice healthier thinking patterns on a daily basis. realistically consider how you judge others and why you're being so harsh on yourself when you would never act like that towards anyone else. understand that your energy, your presence, the way you smile and comfort and work, what you can give and receive - all of that is more important to pretty much everyone, than how you look. after a while, especially when you love or care for someone, their appearance becomes a total secondary characteristic. nobody is worrying that much over these self perceived flaws you're so stuck on, as much as you are. if they do take the time to mull on you, it's more likely they think something simplistic such as: oh there's that girl who lent me her homework or who always wears cool shirts, or whatever. they're too busy stressing about themselves.

6. attempt to build your own confidence. this is another thing i can't grasp either but. basically. you are going to be you for the rest of your life and that is a fact. the only realize you think it's a bad thing at the moment is because that's how you've been taught to feel. but you can unlearn, you can let go of what hurts. and that starts with accepting what you can't change and controlling what you can - your self esteem, your internal narrative, how you take care of your body and mind. even engaging in small, seemingly dumb exercises like pointing out three things you like about yourself in the mirror, can make a difference. you have all of the time in the world to learn how to be friends with yourself. but you might as well start now. baby steps are good. if you hide, spend half an hour outside, even once a week. get used to the discomfort. treat yourself. let it all contradict. growth is totally inevitable.

unfortunately, there's no all encompassing answer. you can know all of this logically and still feel Bad. and you're obviously allowed to be frustrated, to cry and break down, to have moments where you just feel entirely overwhelmed with self hatred - i can't figure out how to stop them, and i think they will remain with us for a while. maybe the goal is to just to cope with them in a decent way and not to prevent them all together. but those episodes are not an excuse to take your own life, ever. i can't think of a bigger fucking tragedy than the world losing you before you even had the chance to attempt living by an alternative narrative. you deserve so much better. i can't stress it enough. you have a whole open future just waiting for you, a healthy body to see it all with - it's going to be beautiful, it's going to surprise you even when you think you're a totally hopeless case. you're not. that's just another lie. your humanity is never going to depend on your physicality and anyone who can't accept that can fuck off!!! anyway i hope you know that there are genuinely so many resources available if you feel like this is getting Too much to handle by yourself. you're honestly not alone and if this is having a big impact on your overall stability then you're totally entitled to professional or medical support. it doesn't have to be a big deal. suicidal thoughts are not normal and there are people who will enable you to dissect and overcome them, you just have to make the initial choice to reach out. even if your brain is screaming otherwise. whether it's through school or a hotline or your doctor - communication WILL put your pain in perspective eventually, in turn lessening it. please consider it. even if takes you your whole lifetime to appreciate yourself, the fact that you're here and trying and navigating this shitty world is more than good enough. i'll be rooting for you from a place of total understanding until the end of time. please take and let me know if you need a friend. i'll be here.

*sorry if this didn't help. the other day i was having an Episode and nothing anyone said could've changed how absolutely disgusting i felt. sometimes it's like that. but this will always be here for you to look back on when you're in a more fair and objective state of mind.

anyway I kinda want to ramble about internalised arophobia for a bit because earlier I was joking with a friend and implied friendship is better than romantic love and immediately felt horrible as if id said something completely contrary to reason that was likely to upset her. and for a bit I was feeling shitty because like. have I really not made any progress? there's still a huge part of me that sees romance as inherently better than friendship. That’s why it feels bad for me to ship my main ship as a qpr/soft romo even though I really really really want to, and even though I'm actively trying to talk about the characters that way. theres? a lot to unlearn and I haven't managed to unlearn much yet, but I am in a place where at least I recognise whats harmful to me. even though I impulsively want to ship characters based on stupid shit like allos do (and even more than they do I think, since fandom culture forced shipping at me and I basically Had To Ship but? didn't think that way, never will, and therefore just partnered people off on arbitrary basis, which has become a really hard habit to break) I now know I don't have to and I can fight the urge and explore complex platonic relationships instead and not have shipping conversations that bore me deep down. the other thing internalised arophobia means for me is that I often basically have to Hard No things that technically should be a Soft No just because I need time to unlearn them as a Hard Yes. like soulmates? I think could technically maybe kinda work for aros if you changed a lot around in the au and spent lots of time worldbuilding but. I am Not in the right place to do that and first have to unlearn that soulmates are good and real and a hundred other amatonormative things. working through all this shit actually really sucks sometimes because half of me really wants to like things and knows it would be so much easier but the other half knows they'll hurt me and its really really hard work and I don't want to have to do it but! it will be better for my mental health in the long run just as building more freindships and talking to you guys about my opinons has been. I'm also really looking forward to being able to dig up my own real feelings after the amatonormativity brainwashing has all been washed away. because like,  back when I was dealing with stuff a lot worse I really subconsciously equated qprs as a backup option now that I realised I could never have a romantic relationship. so I think after ive worked through that (and uh. the mess that I am after qpr number one turned out like it is, you all know about how I freak out if I try and label shit now so that's fun) I may discover some interesting true desires for qprs, including whether at the core of it I really want one or not. So yeah right now I;m still dealing with a lot of confusion and guilt and I hate it a lot and I'm having to fight the part of me that says not bothering would be better but I think I'm heading in the right direction sorry for this incoherent wall of text.

Fairytale Getaway (Of Cherry Skies and Sour Apples)

I.

His tongue is a slab of rotting pulp. That same mutant sugar embeds itself into each outcoming word. This, at the very least, explains the unconditional notes of fermenting orange in his breath. Or, maybe, it’s just the rejection of oral hygiene. He’s not exactly keen toward mouthwash.

The reality is, I’ve grown up knowing that someday, whenever I was to skim the surface of womanhood, I’d be married off. I’ve spent just as long with intrusive thoughts, silently begging for a tolerable husband. Most suitors have met this low-bar threshold. Elric Bliss, however, has fallen fatally short. So short, in fact, that each time he over-enunciates his “t” sound, I now have to restrain myself from wringing his skinny neck—every movement he makes seems to aggravate me further.

Elric is also the sole candidate to earn my mother’s approval. Read: He was the only man of royal blood to proposition me. Royal blood so thick, that clearly, it’s congealing inside his skull. No person with such a self-important worldview could ever be in full control of his brain function.

Nonetheless, as a fairytale protagonist, I’ve found ways to hold onto hope. Although, there will always be something morale-gnawing about having such flimsy control over your own destiny. Which daydream-tier tropes will consume the remainder of my life? Is my unwilling existence only satire? Or, possibly, I’m only the victim of some sort of macabre snuff fantasy. Soon enough, I’m certain that this smog will clear, and I’ll meet my fate. After all, my story doesn’t truly begin until I’m forcibly thrust into my first prince-aligned chronicle of drama—please, disregard Elric’s lack of literal princehood. It’s not as if my mother can tell the difference, either.

“You know, my dearest Connie, I look forward to boiling alive the flesh of any man who dares interfere with our union. Ha! I’m hilarious, aren’t I? Please, dearest Connie, tell me that I’m the unmatched master of relatable comedy.” Elric spits each word like a spongy bullet, squeezing out from between chipped teeth and settling into my lap. Soon enough, my own vomit is likely to take their place.

His muddy eyes are glazed over and look as if they’d be as malleable as flan. On that note, I could certainly benefit from some midday dessert, right now. Maybe just some freshly-picked fruit.

I roll the tulle of my dress between my fingertips, shrugging from across the table. “Well, of course. Clearly, you’re a very relatable person, with in-touch life experience. How else would you be able to channel the thoughts of a common person so accurately? Anyway, could I have a sip of your gin?” I ask in my most milk chocolate-drenched voice, slowly beginning to snake my arm across the tabletop.

Elric contorts his face in disgust. “You may not be familiar yet, but distinguished ladies keep away from alcoholic drinks,” he says, curling his fingers around his glass, lightly sloshing the liquid. “Soon enough, I’m sure you’ll be able to unlearn such savage habits. No need to worry.”

Then, following a beat of heavy silence, “It should still be some time until our meal is finished being prepared,” I say. “Would you mind if I step out, privately, for a minute? I just need to stretch my legs. I’ve been sitting here for quite a long time.” It feels like it’s been decades.

“Do you not want me to join you?” Elric questions as we continue to hold eye-contact, the suspense nearly visible between us.

I force a taut smile, the strawberry tone of my lips turning pale from the tension. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to burden you. I’ll only be a moment.”

I begin to stand as Elric scoffs. “Fine,” he says, before snorting. “Please, be back soon. I’m sure our food will arrive from the kitchen soon enough.”

I scuttle toward the door, the tapping of my heels echoing off the dining room walls. Those same vinyl heels are abandoned shortly thereafter, as I begin to jog down the hallway.

Sun-faded portraits track me with their eyes.

The air of this estate is slowly poisoning me—as is the heir.

II.

Just beyond the manicured gardens, at the point where weeds are spared and allowed to curl up from the dirt, I slow from a gallop to a trudge. I finally attempt to catch my breath.

Faded cherry skies are hanging above and around me, gelatinous, and infused almost comically with specks of glitter. The clouds swirl like the mouths of paralyzed tornadoes. There’s a faintly nutty scent in the air, mingling with the much more potent smell of soil and artificial berries.  

What an incredibly ordinary, mundane day.

Shortly off the edge of the property, I come to a halt. Clusters upon clusters of trees stare down at me, scrutinizing me, bone by bone. What would a royal estate be without a forbidden forest, conveniently placed nearby?

A lopsided sign, its wood beginning to grow fungus and moss, offers a message:

“Warning!

Forbidden forest! Very forbidden! Boo!

Do not enter, Connie!”

My shoulders tense ever-so-slightly as I drift past.

The sky above me seems to darken under the canopy of rich greens and browns. Beneath my bare feet, the ground begins to resemble crusted-over custard. The sounds of chirping and squawking and intermittent crunching drown out my thoughts.

So, it seems, this is where I’m meant to be. Cool.

I begin to hum softly, matching the tempo of my movement.

Finally, I can breathe again.

III.

My feet are stained nearly ink-black by the time I see it. Meanwhile, the burning in the back of my calves is nagging me like a frustrated toddler.

A pastel-toned cottage sits under darkness. The roof and walls are sloped, curving into the shape of a colossal mushroom. I can only vaguely distinguish the shades of candied orange and petal pink from one another. A single door and slit-like window sit on the surface.

Well, that looks wonderfully suspicious and likely sinister. Perfect. Clearly, I’m right where I’m meant to be.

I rap twice on the door, which appears tall enough to accommodate a bipedal horse.

After a minute or so, when the cocoon of darkness is just beginning to weigh down on me, the door begins to inch open. A soft, orange glow creeps into the forest, along with a waft of burning sage.

A pair of seemingly backlit eyes rapidly dim as they meet my own.

Dressed entirely in black velvet, a sheet-pale woman looms above me. Her wide-brimmed hat comes up to a perfectly crisp point. While pursing her already thin lips, a boney, lithe hand reaches into her pocket. As she turns her nose downward, its sharp hook becomes all-the-more visible.

Meanwhile, the generic woodland backtrack seems to reach its end.

I stay still and quiet.

The harsh-angled woman pulls out a single piece of fruit, before holding it out toward me. Her razorblade nails dig into the flesh of an otherwise flawless apple, juice beginning to trail down her fingers.

“I assume you came for this?” she asks, her voice like soured honey.

“Did I? Oh. That makes sense,” I mutter, pulling the fruit from her grip. “Thanks.”

With only the lightest hesitation, I close my eyes, and push my teeth into the offering.

Her lips twist into a smile.

“Enjoy,” she whispers, voice practically dissolving into the space between us.

IV. Epilogue.

Nearly a year has passed since Gardenia and I first met. Since then, her dedication to her orchard has only deepened, as I have continued to support and encourage her agricultural hobbies. The quality of her product has also improved, now notably less sour, in contrast with that first sample she’d gifted me. I no longer taste her pickings at the front doorway. Rather, I often find myself enjoying at least a pair of freshly harvested apples, sitting by Gardenia at the dining room table. The thick scent of baking pie blankets us both.

Spread across the surrounding walls, there sits several clusters of wildflowers; which, are enchanted so as to cling, mummified in shades of spell-enhanced neon, to the darkwood. Gardenia is thumbing through her newest bread-focused recipe-book, sucking on the inside of her cheek as she jots another note in the margin. She’s absolutely beautiful like this. So entrenched in her passions, her moss-green eyes glowing—quite literally. Gardenia is a magical being with magical quirks, after all.

“Oh, wow, I have to try this out… sometime soon,” she says, pointing a sharp nail at the surface of the page, beside a grey-toned illustration of a dinner roll. “I’m not sure I’ve ever thought to add vanilla to this sort of mixture, before. Hm.”

As it turns out, settling into a domestic relationship with a witch comes with a wonderful bonus: It’s much simpler to hide from your family’s periodic search-parties. Of course, it isn’t as if I’d need that particular perk to keep me willingly tethered here.

I’d never planned to fall in love—rather, I’d begun to wilfully grapple against the notion—but I’m grateful to be in the position that I am, now.

After all, I’d choose my dearest Gardenia over all else, anyone, anyday.

Particularly over Elric Bliss.

Falling in love with Peter Kavinsky—right along with Lara Jean—shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. And not just because of his swoon-inducing smile, his ability to make a back-pocket spin in the middle of a cafeteria look downright sinful, or even his impressive emotional depth, either. Rather, I love him—as so many other grown-ass women now do—because I have spent my life falling in and out of love with Peter Kavinskys, just as I was trained to.

I should begin by saying that my now, maybe not-so-former infatuation with a seemingly never-ending list of white boys is my hidden shame. As a young black woman who came of age at a flashpoint in our nation’s relationship to and dialogue about race, it’s the dirty little secret I aimed to bury once I reached adulthood. I’d promised myself it would go the way of my heinous Aeropostale tee collection and my hot pink Samsung SEEK: matured past, grown out of.

While I was never the type of girl to pour her feelings out onto the page like Lara Jean—for fear of making them tangible would make them too real, perhaps—I was the type of girl who daydreamed. Who imagined herself tangled in all sorts of intricate, decidedly un-Indiana romances with the kinds of boys that populated all of my favorite stories: the sensitive nerdy musician type a la Nick O’Leary (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), the bad boy with a troubled past in John Bender (The Breakfast Club) and especially the, “It’s your dream dad, not mine!” star jock and secret poet of Austin Ames (A Cinderella Story). These characters, or what I thought these characters embodied, helped me formulate what would become The Perfect Boy™.

The “White” following “Perfect” kind of just went without saying. (The “Boy” and not“Girl” or “Nonbinary Person,” on the other hand, was reiterated strongly and often.)

You should know that I’ve only ever dated people of color. Even in high school, my not-so-spectacular track record with almost-boyfriends is exclusively black. Somewhere deep, somewhere beyond the formula of book-and-movie boyfriends I’d concocted, I was still much more interested in finding kinship and solace and—I can’t believe I’m gonna say this about my high school “ex”, but here we go—passion with other people who looked like me than I was with finding my Kavinsky.

But the white boy thing was more than an embarrassing blip on the radar of my adolescence—my longing for these boys was the product of a sound indoctrination from years of white media consumption.

To All the Boys I Loved Before (both the book and the movie) subverted narratives in which the quirky white girl is the one deemed worthy enough to get the get The Perfect Boy™—girls like the one I was relegated to background roles and left romance-less by the end of the story—in so many of the right ways. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Beforecreated, for me, a rich world of beautiful, smart young women that neither relied on men to uplift them not validate them. But, you know, it was sort of a perfect bonus when that happened too.

Even now, weeks after its release, my inbox still occasionally pings with messages from friends watching it for the first time. Today, for instance, one of my closest friends couldn’t even wait for the credits to roll before she texted me. She said she’d tried to get away from her love of romances, but this managed to draw her right back in. There were moments throughout where she worried she’d have to turn it off, abandon it once it followed the same trajectory of so many of its predecessors.

“I just knew [Peter Kavinsky] had to do something to ruin things. I just knew there was no way they could end up together,” she said. “The happy ending just felt impossible.”

So many of us were waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the catch. The first time I watched it, I just knew that the inevitable breakdown seen was right around the corner. The part of the story where the young bookish girl, or so often the woman of color, has what seems like a light at the end of the tunnel, extinguished. Where she encounters some sort of embarrassment, some unearthed trauma that precludes her from a happy ending without also enduring great suffering.

The perceived impossibility of To All the Boys, I realize, is at the heart of why I loved it—why I found myself clicking replay before we’d even reached the brief mid-credits scene. The image of a young, smart, bookish woman of color falling in love without grief (related to the relationship) or shame on screen felt too big to assign a name. Felt too close to a dream not to hold tight to it, to close my eyes and will myself back to a world in which those things still seemed attainable.

Half of the story is the fact I didn’t grow up with images of young girls of color falling in love on screen at all, let alone with a heartthrob like Kavinsky. But the other half—perhaps the half that’s even more harrowing—is that I certainly didn’t see us falling in love separate from trauma, or rarer still, with another person of color.

I watched and read hundreds of stories in which the luckiest girls fell in love and rode off into the sunset—often in a cool Jeep!—with their Prince Charming. And that Prince Charming always looked like Peter Kavinsky. Peter Kavinsky—and by extension, Peter and Lara Jean’s fauxlationship—was everything, but it was also precisely what I’ve been implicitly taught to desire. In this way, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before did what so many of its genre forebears had done before it.

And the thing is, I’m not asking this movie to be some wild break from the genre. I don’t even really want that of this particular film. What I do want, though, is thousands of different narratives about what it looks like for girls from all backgrounds to fall in love. We deserve every iteration of story in which young women of color get to fall in love with a sweet, emotionally-adept, whatever-trope-suits-your-fancy partner.

So much of what makes To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before an unbelievably awe-inspiring, tweet-worthy movie, particularly for adults like me, is the element of unconscious wish fulfillment. Like, of course I’m not a teenage girl in a hyper white space, yearning for a story about a bookworm woman of color who falls in love—period, let alone with the “it” guy—anymore. And of course I’m no longer relying on these images to help me feel worthy of love and affection in the way I once was. But I’ve been sitting with that same yearning since then. That girl, the me who needed those things so desperately when she was a kid, never went away, she just evolved.

But even in that evolution, there are moments of deeply troubling considerations about what my love of Peter Kavinsky and this story might mean. Is it him, this particular character and this particular actor, or does my desire speak to something greater?

I’m 24 years old and settled into a community of black folks—friends and found family alike—that not only affirm, but uplift me. Everyday I am reminded of the beauty and brilliance of our people. And I am reminded of my own beauty and brilliance, by extension. This is a far cry from my hometown in suburban Indiana, from an upbringing that was largely populated by people and spaces that could do neither of those things. But that juxtaposition only serves to ground me more firmly in what I know to be true: one of my greatest gifts is that I was born to this black body, and can love other people who share it.

Yet, knowing those things doesn’t automatically undo the years of isolation and forced assimilation I endured to get here. Knowing those things doesn’t automatically help me unlearn the lies I internalized about myself and any potential partners who looked like me.

What I’m saying is shaking this doesn’t happen for all of us overnight. I’m saying that the mechanisms of white supremacy are complex and, oftentimes, hidden in plain sight. If I spent a lifetime both abhorring and simultaneously craving the white male gaze, then it’s going to take some time—ruminating on my understandings of desire and shame and identity—to walk back the decades of deeply entrenched ideologies which taught me to aspire to finding my happy ever after in the arms of a white man.