I’ve said enough about my reasons to dislike the recent events in the show, and the apparent shift in writing and style this season suffered (so far at least, fingers crossed for a change). Time to put some good vibes on this blog with a quick, absolutely not needed, and extremely self indulgent (and as such not necessarily fully objective) breakdown of the dance in Curse of the Blood Moon. A moment that, if we forget about its less than thrilling consequences, is probably (definitely, in my opinion) the best expression of pure Starco love, and that strongly tugs on my heartstrings.

In this moment, Star and Marco are alone with each other. Sure there are like eighty demons around them, but they’re just memories from the past, not actually there. Similarly to Booth Buddies, the two are pitted alone with their feelings.

They both entered this knowing what the goal was, separating their souls and their weird romantic feelings, so it’s expected for both of them to dance and reenact the moment that they thought was the one that bonded their souls, and started it all. And yet Star gasps happily when Marco sweeps her away to initiate the waltz, just like in Blood Moon Ball. Obviously it’s mostly a reference, but as I said this is going to be a very self indulgent post, so I want to assume that it’s super cute for her to react that way to something that she knew was coming & that was supposedly part of a ritual to erase that night.

(she’s smiling more now, too)

At first they don’t take the dance too seriously: they joke around as they always do, acting like the best friends they are. This should be a somewhat somber moment to them, since they’re trying to erase feelings that, as painful as they were, accompanied them at the very least since Booth Buddies, at least in the current form and intensity, but all the anxiety they displayed while listening about what the Stone would have done melts away once they start dancing.

Again, self indulgent and not very objective post that purposefully tries to poke at the heart of any shipper who might be reading, but this is not a Star who’s thinking about the ritual, it’s a Star who’s having a lot of fun with her best friend, and who reminisces small details from something that happened more than one year ago in-universe and that she still fondly remembers.

Then they get to the new part of the dance, the one they didn’t get to experience because Tom interrupted it. And things start changing a bit, the banter stops for a moment, as the music gets faster, and they just just while smiling like idiots (I mean Star is, harder to tell for Marco given the mask but he surely is, too).

Then the music gets slower and enters a “little warmer, and even more intimate” part, and Star starts feeling hard, and thinking.

And she starts getting worried, because this dance, her first chance (shown to us on screen, at least) after… well, Booth Buddies, to truly let herself sink into their friendship, had two effects on her: plant the seed of doubt, and make her wonder if these feelings had truly been caused by the Moon, and realize that she doesn’t mind them at all. That she never acted on them for all these months for a number of certainly good reasons that aren’t made explicit nor important here (scared to leave Tom, scared to start a relationship with a friend risking to ruin their relationship should something go wrong, something along these lines). The moment she’s isolated from all the noise going on in her life, and it’s just her and Marco, she understands what she really wants, and Marco does as well (I’m talking mostly about Star in this post because the episode focused on her the most, but that’s just because she’s the main character, and because Marco’s feeling were already plenty clear since Lava Lake Beach, and the beginning of the episode already focused on them quite hard).

And sure, she’s still worried about the curse, because she doesn’t like the idea of her feelings being forced by some external force, but at the same time she loves what she is doing right now, with Marco. And she’d like to keep doing that. I have no doubts that had the Severing Stone somehow no worked, leaving their memory intact, Star would have broken up with Tom as soon as the vision ended (ok maybe not literally there in front of all their friends, but very soon after).

THIS is when Star and Marco first fell in love. All the feelings up to this point were strong already, and clearly built attraction between them, but this is when I feel confident in saying they went from “We like each other but it’s confusing” to “We love each other”. And that’s why the Severing Stone acted in this instant, because as Relicor said it required the memory of the first moment they fell in love as a price to remove the curse.

What does this tells us about Star and Marco then? I don’t want to make predictions about what’s to come in this post, but the message is clear, and it’s consistent with what we saw in Booth Buddies already: Star and Marco’s lives are confusing, they are confused teens struggling with magic and love and monsters and politics. But when they get a rare moment of calm, and they can truly think about the nature of their relationship and what they feel deep inside, we get a kiss, we get them falling in love for the first time. Guess we gotta wait for another moment like this, and this time there aren’t going to be magical rocks severing memories around.

Lastly, a focus on the sweetest moment ever, the hand holding.

Star gently but firmly holds Marco’s hand while her voice actress delivers an exceptional line full of love that spells “Screw the curse and being worried about what might happen, this is what I really want”, and Marco takes a moment to reciprocate, because he’s a Marco and he’s unsure and he’s worried that the curse might be somehow responsible for this, but ultimately understands his feelings as well. And BAM, fall in love.

To truly conclude, an even more personal consideration that isn’t necessarily important in the episode itself, and maybe not even done on purpose by writers and boarders: in this context this scene is about thirteen times better than a kiss. Being effectively part of the dance, it’s more intimate relatively to the moment at hand (hah), it’s seamlessly included in what was already happening but perfectly displays a change in Star and Marco’s mind, an important decision being made. And this allows the scene to be strongly characterized as something unique and sweet, as opposed to what a kiss would have done, with all the implications already seen in Booth Buddies that it’d have inevitably brought with itself.

