I think I've died laughing at this. I think I'm dead and I need to be resurrected. This show. I swear. "This week on queerbaiting with Cas and Dean."

Let's be real Elizabeth Burke is one of the most amazing things to happen in network television in a long time, with Diana Berrigan being a close runner-up.

I am also addicted to crime dramas. The typical relationship I see in a crime drama is one of these:

- The partner who is the LEO has conflict in their relationship because the non-LEO partner is frustrated with always having to compromise for the job. This either ends in divorce/breakup (most frequent outcome) or with time, patience, and a lot of communication, the LEO comes to realize that they are dedicating too much of themselves to their work and makes some compromises for their partner.

- If the partner who is not a LEO is understanding of the time constraints/accepting when the LEO is called away for a case, the conflict will frequently stem from lack of communication on the LEO's part, and conversations like "Why didn't you tell me you were in a hostage situation" "There wasn't time to call you" "That's some bullshit" "I didn't want to worry you" "I worry MORE from not knowing" happen. This is usually resolved within the episode or within the next couple episodes, but seems to be the most frequently repeating argument between a LEO and their partner if the relationship doesn't end.

- If both partners are LEOs, the conflict stems from "I'm capable of protecting myself" "I don't want you to get hurt" "You can't coddle me, you know the job is dangerous" and eventually they either break up or come to terms with the fact that either one of them might get shot at any moment and they just have to deal with it.

- If the relationship is still in the "will they or won't they" stage, there is a lot of time spent on how dangerous/unpredictable the LEO's job is and whether the civilian partner really wants to be involved with a LEO at all, given the risks/demands. If the outcome is "they won't," the civilian partner gives a speech about how they can't deal with the uncertainty. If the outcome is "they will," the civilian partner gives a speech about how they want to stand by their partner even when it's rough going. Or, if both the people involved are LEOs, there is a ton of time spent on fraternization rules, whether their relationship will compromise them emotionally in the field, and how to keep it secret from their supervisor.

All of these tropes repeat ad nauseum on crime dramas, but those shows are targeted toward adults. By the time the audience has reached the age crime dramas are targeted at (target audience usually the 25-50 crowd), they've already had at least one complex relationship and so they can relate to the arguments happening on screen even if the situation isn't the same as what they went through. For a YA audience, though, this might be the first time they're seeing a relationship where people have trouble communicating and fight about issues where neither person is entirely right or wrong. So yeah, I can see how the relationship drama gets tiresome because I'm tired of the above mentioned tropes (hence why I appreciate White Collar, because the LEO/civilian marriage in that show largely avoids most of these tropes and when they do occur, the Burkes discuss it like mature adults and compromise), but I stick by my statement that it's valuable to see in a YA drama.

I'm about halfway through Season 3 of Korra right now, so when Mark catches up, for once I will be watching a show along with Mark that I have never seen before! That's rad!

As for this episode - look, I deeply appreciate that Mako and Korra's relationship is being depicted with so many struggles and issues. Too many times, once characters get together on a show, all the problems miraculously cease. That is not what a relationship is about. They take communication and work and compromise, and I'm thoroughly sick of the main romantic conflict in shows being the "Will they or won't they" that immediately disappears once they do. It's disingenuous to pump up all the problems that come before getting together and completely ignore all the problems that happen after getting together.

This is especially a problem with shows targeted at young teens, who are just entering the world of romance and dating and funny feelings about other people they might want to kiss. Kids who have grown up on the "happily ever after" narrative sold to them by Disney don't typically see couples who fight and argue and have to talk about their problems and figure out how to communicate. Whether or not Mako and Korra make it in the long run, just showing something like this on a show targeted at a YA audience is incredibly valuable.

My own experiences with food and hunger are a lot different than yours, Mark, and I can't pretend that I understand what it's like to live with limited food as a school-age child. I didn't have to worry about where my food would come from growing up. My parents were basically middle class and we never went hungry. They were health conscious without giving us a complex about it - they just wouldn't buy candy or sodas or sugary cereal, and if we asked them to buy it, they would say no because it wasn't good for us. So our snacks were things like cereal bars and rice cakes and PB&J.

It wasn't until I got into college that I started understanding what it was to be hungry. I had a meal plan, yes, but the school cafeteria was rather overpriced, and I always ended up running out or running low on my meal plan at the end of the semester. There were weeks where I didn't eat anything but corn flakes and peanut butter. Then there were the breaks - Thanksgiving and Spring Break - when my parents couldn't afford to fly me home and the dining hall was closed because most people weren't on campus. This was my first experience with "going hungry" (even though I didn't have it anywhere near as bad as Mark or some of the other people who have spoken in the comments), because I had nowhere to get food. I didn't have spending money - I lived in a dorm and had a meal plan, I didn't go out very often, and I didn't have a job. My first Spring Break spent staying on campus, I woke up in the morning hungry, ate maybe a bowl of instant oatmeal all day, and went to bed hungry. It was a terrible experience and I found that I slept more, did less, and overall felt awful.

Once I graduated college and I moved in with my boyfriend, that's when it really started to get bad. I made minimum wage and the company I worked for loved to cut my hours. My boyfriend had a job but he worked for a small, family-owned business and we never knew when he was going to get paid. I worked from home over the internet, so instead of just rent being essential, it became rent, internet, and electricity. Our roommate was horrible about paying bills on time so just about every month we had to pay a disconnection fee for either the internet or the electricity. We lived on corned beef hash, rice, bread, beans, and ground beef. I got into the habit of deliberately skipping meals so our food would last longer. I stopped eating breakfast. Sometimes the only meal I would eat in a day was dinner (ground beef and rice, corned beef hash and beans, or rice and beans). We would call my boyfriend's parents and say we should come over for dinner just so we could get a free meal we didn't have to pay for. After a life of eating well (my dad is a chef-level cook and we always ate excellent food), it was a huge disappointment to be in that place once I was on my own. I fretted over being able to feed my boyfriend with something that didn't look like dog food in a skillet. I took smaller portions so he could have more. We had dogs, which might not have been a very responsible decision with the way our finances were, but they were completely dependent on us so sometimes I would skimp on our own groceries to be able to afford dog food, because as I reasoned, it wasn't their fault their humans were too fucking poor to feed them, and they didn't deserve to go hungry (which begs the question of whether I felt like I deserved to go hungry, and sometimes I think I did feel that way, because I had a college degree and I was an adult and I was supposed to be successful but I wasn't, so clearly this is what I deserved).

It's better now. We both have comfortable salaries and I can afford to buy groceries that include fresh vegetables different types of meats. Hell, I can afford things that I considered impossible luxuries when we were struggling, like cookies and frozen breakfast sandwiches. I definitely feel like if you haven't been there, at least for a little while, you don't understand. When I first read this book as a teenager, I didn't understand, because I had never experienced a day where I didn't know if I was going to eat tomorrow. Now that I've been there, Evvy's experience feels so viscerally real.

E L I O T

My heart is breaking.

(source)

In comparison, like the commenter above I, too, live in Texas. For about two years I lived in a 700 square foot apartment that I paid $685 a month for. It was in a middle-class suburban neighborhood. Now, I moved across town to another middle-class suburban neighborhood and rent a 1400 square foot house for $1325 a month.

California - especially the "famous" areas of California like San Francisco and LA - are ridiculous expensive when compared to other states. New York City is the same way - up there, I paid $450 a month for half of a bedroom in the top floor of a house (we only had the top floor) that amounted to probably 600 square feet.

Oh my god he makes an unfairly attractive Jupiter.

I'm a tech too, but on the stage side of things, and I find it interesting how cinema and stage work seems to be a completely different animal to us (the people who make the magic happen) compared to the actors (the people the audience actually sees). It's a completely different atmosphere - not nearly as much desperation - when it comes to the crews. Do you think it's because we're more adaptable, because our skill sets mean we can translate over in to other fields, or do you think it's just because we're more practical?

Case in point, when I first started working in live theater in NYC (off-off-Broadway, mostly), what really stuck out to me was that the crews just... accepted that none of us were going to get paid as much as our time was really worth. It was just a given. We all knew it, nobody ever talked about it, and the show went on. The actors, though, were constantly trying to re-negotiate their pay contracts or shriek about how they were Union so they needed XYZ. Let me tell you, it is absolutely infuriating to cart the light board down from the booth and get everything set up and ready for Q2Q only to overhear one of the actresses arguing furiously with the stage manager about how they shouldn't be called today because they'd already put in their hours for their work week and "Union regs say..."

I guess what I'm asking is do you find this true for the film industry as well, or is this something unique to stage? That the techs are generally more grounded and practical-minded and don't tend to raise a fuss.

Also I don’t get fancy, expensive coffins? It’s literally a box for a dead body that goes underground. What is the point?

I really don't either. But then again I'm in the "just burn me and toss my ashes somewhere" camp - even though intellectually I know that my consciousness no longer resides in my form, something about being buried to rot away slowly is super disturbing to me. I'll leave it up to my husband as to what he wants to do with me as long as cremation is involved - bury my ashes under a tree, scatter them somewhere, inter them in a cemetery, keep them in an urn on the mantle, IDGAF as long as there's no corpse.