#balthday

[violivs]

It's hard to be anywhere these days

When all I want is you...

Or, Ben spends Balthday wracked with anxiety and guilt and can't even enjoy his time with Beatrice because it's all too temporary. </3

[galwithalibrarycard]

When Bea comes up to Ben at the end of the party and says “you’re smiling” with genuine surprise, though. Because he’s been in such an anxious funk all night that seeing him smile is a surprise. My heart 💔💔💔

[lolilodaily]

[the-freespirited-princess-trope]

rosa: why are you doing the dishes at, like, three in the morning benedick: well, someone's got to

[galwithalibrarycard]

Fred Boyet’s nonplussed delivery of the line “You live in a tent with Kitso” is maybe the best line reading in all of Balthday.

So of course he has to follow it up with inviting the Tent Team to move in with him and his cute dog. Green flags everywhere, this man.

[galwithalibrarycard]

I’ll probably make a Balthday episode thoughts post tomorrow, but for now I want to share two of my Balthday fics from 2016.

What’s In A Name is a missing-moment fic set during Balthday that explains how Ben and Rosa get to the amicable place we leave them at the end of the episode. They bond over taking care of a drunk Peter and hating their unusual full names.

quick bright things is a fic set during Balthday about Meg and Peter’s friendship. At the party, they bond over both being bisexual and in unrequited love with their best friends.

If you choose to read them, I hope you enjoy!

[galwithalibrarycard]

I think the effect of Balthday is that the flatmates realize their anxieties and problems are still present despite the rules, and those anxieties feel even more intense now that they’re re-experiencing them after a period of avoidance. Freddie is afraid the flatmates will be more tempted to break rules because of the Balthday reprieve. Instead, they mostly sink deeper into the sunk-cost fallacy of the rules and hold onto them yet more tightly. Because the lack of rules triggered all their individual anxieties really hard.

- Freddie experiences the loss of control over her flatmates and flat, and she’s immediately overwhelmed and eager to get the rules back. She doesn’t have a lot of insight into this feeling and why it exists for her. She’s just redoubled in her instinctive motivation to keep the rules in order to keep control and feel safe.

- Balth experiences the worry and fear for Peter’s well-being that he hasn’t had to feel since the rules, and it’s so intense that he can’t cope on his own- he’s actually talking about it with his friends and on-camera this time. He realizes it isn’t healthy but doesn’t know how to deal with it. This is where Balth starts to consider that leaving the flat is a possibility. Balth is maybe the only one who has realized that the rules are not forever, and he has to figure out how to cope with his feelings for Peter in general regardless of the rules, which are only a bandage over the problem, not a solution.

- Ben experiences socializing without the camera as a buffer for the first time in months. He’s so anxious that he pretty much can’t talk to anyone but Bea all night, until he throws himself into housework and bonds with Rosa over that. Basically, Beatrice is his safe person and he’s about to lose her to traveling, so he has to be even more invested in the rules because at least with the rules he has friends and the camera as a means to socialize that doesn’t make him panic so much. If he has neither Bea nor the camera, he simply cannot socialize- but as an extrovert/ambivert, he can’t self-isolate either. This is where his motivation fully shifts from getting Pedrazar together to just trying not to end up all alone himself.

- Peter lets himself get way too drunk when the rules are lifted. He has to confront the fear that he needs the rules to control himself, to keep himself from drinking too much and acting out. The rest of the series for him is figuring out why that is, what he’s really running from with all the partying, and getting back to a version of himself that’s functional and happy on his own, sans rules.

[galwithalibrarycard]

We never see the paper chains throughout Balthday. Which means Ben probably decorated his room with them instead :( to celebrate Bea getting to stay there for the night :( and then he had to kick her out in the morning :(((((