to clarify for anyone who cares, i fucking love bumbleby. in canon it’s a wonderful ship, a beautiful story and an excellent slowburn

but specifically, their dynamic does not draw me in as much as blake and ilia’s dynamic does. that doesn’t mean i want blake and ilia to be endgame. far from it. but just because i inherently enjoy the dynamic of blake and ilia’s “childhood best friends to wrong-side-of-the-tracks reluctant rivals to hesitant friends post-redemption“ more than i enjoy canon bees doesn’t mean i want the ship i find more enjoyable to be canon

i think a major part of the appeal of catmeleon, for me (beyond the aforementioned dynamic), is the fact that it’s *not* canon. that their relationship *isn’t* given much of a focus. that’s there’s a shittonne of room for exploration without boundaries. i can fill in the gaps in canon because it’s ambiguous enough for me to do that! lines like “your relationship with their daughter” (said to ilia re: blake) are such an easy jumping off point for all their precanon days where they spent time together in the WF - headcanons like how much time they spent training together, whether they went on paired missions together, whether they shared a tent or went star gazing or what kind of shit they got up to in the WF, pranks they pulled… yknow prior to ad/am showing up (which adds a whole other juicy layer of canonical angst that’s easy to fill in as well!!)

canon doesn’t give me any of that, but it implies *enough* that it gets my gay little gears turning and i can run with it with absolutely Nothing standing in my way and it’s fucking fantastic! i don’t have to automatically turn to an AU to fill in story gaps bc canon already gives me so much room! and it’s wonderful!

ofc i want to see ilia and blake interact in canon again bc i want more of those canonical moments – but i’m actually not hoping for them to be read as romantic or as any kind of “direction towards endgame”. bc again, the bees are lovely and great and their story is awesome obvs. but that’s not gonna stop me from shipping catmeleon as hard as i do. so like, yknow. if you follow me, that’s the ride you’re in for sekhfskrhgk celebration of canon bees during the air time of each volume, then followed by the inevitably dive into gay catmeleon superhell during the hiatuses you’re welcome XD