#Pointless Romance

[stiffyck]

I should be allowed to get a "skip pointless and stupidly forced romance" button in everything I watch ever

[di-daynamic]

No, but the Hunger Games did need the romance plotline. See, Snow got it all wrong for the cause of the districts' rebellion. He thought an act of love is entirely separate and different from an act of rebellion, that the two are mutually exclusive. But we saw even in Katniss' though process that the two are mixed. And for the districts, the two are the same thing. For seventy-four years they've been forced to watch their children, grandchildren, siblings, niblings, friends die in the Games or through exploitation, are told it's an honour for them to die for the Capitol and are not allowed to grieve. And then suddenly this girl comes up and plants her feet and says 'no'. She survives through illegal hunting, avoiding the miserable death via starvation or the terrible community home. She doesn't stand by to watch her sister die, she volunteers. She doesn't treat her friend's death as one of a tribute to the Capitol, but as the horrible killing of an innocent little girl who deserves to be memorialized. She thanks and humanizes another district's people. She gives another tribute a merciful death. She refuses to give up on the man she loves, repeatedly. Defying all sense and establishment.

That is rebellion, for the Districts. Love, loyalty, grief, kindness, mercy - they're all rebellious sentiments.

And romantic love is an integral part of that. Not the be all end all, but an intrinsic part. We see sisterhood with Prim, we see friendship with Rue and Finnick and Johanna (and Gale and Madge a little bit), we see mentorship and connection with Haymitch and Boggs, so of course we need the romantic angle with Peeta. Of course we need the dandelion that grows after the war, the dandelion that started it all through one act of kindness to the starving girl he loves.

[childofthestone]

rook and solas...narrative foils? rook? a narrative foil? to SOLAS? rook? to solas? ROOK? ROOK????

[nedlittle]

maybe this is delusional but in the same way that contemporary romance authors switched from writing basketball/football romances to hockey romances bc hockey is a predominantly white sport so they don't need to come up with excuses for all-white casts....i feel like there's been a rise in popularity of viking/norse mythology inspired fantasy bc it's an easy excuse for making all your characters white and blond coinciding with the retvrn/clean girl to alt right/general rise of fascism in the West shit

[regainingparadise]

Is it even Mandalorian romance if they haven't tried to knife each other at least once?

I've been thinking about the people I ship Din Djarin with, and realized that there's an inverse relationship between how much I ship a given couple, and how chill they are together.

Don't get me wrong, I'll happily ship Din with almost everyone, but the ones I get super into? Gimme some good angry fights.

(this says more about me than it does about any of these ships, and this is also 100% not a knock on any of the ships listed or not listed here. It's just me doing some pointless meta about my own tendencies)

In order:

Paz. I love him. They apparently fight all the goddam time. You cannot tell me there is not history there. It makes the times they're on the same side all the more impactful (and adorably awkward).

(I also ship Paz with Axe for the same reason)

2. Migs Mayfeld. Migs is just such a snarky shit, they have every reason to hate each other (/Migs has every reason to assume Din is gonna kill him). They've got the whole fun double-crossing history, and in many ways they're opposites and foils, but ultimately Migs respects and understands Din, and Mando is willing to trust him

3. Cobb Vanth: I mean, their first real interaction is "take it off or I will," so no surprise here. Vanth is very clearly 110% into Din, and they get over the violence phase of their relationship way faster than Din does with either Paz or Migs.

4. Boba Fett. They don't really have a murder phase of their relationship. We get a li'l tension and then they're besties. I ship it, but I'm not as into the ship, 'cause like, how can I ship Mandalorians if I haven't seen them fight each other?

5. Luke Skywalker. I love this ship because it's just...so logical, what with the coparenting. It's a ship in a slightly different category because it lends itself so much to the domestic/parent narrative. But if I'm reading Din/Luke fics, I like a nice (un)healthy dose of tension and possibly violence while they get to know each other

6. Omera. I love Omera/Din as a "what could have been if his life was very very different" ship--especially given that she apparently has some violence in her past that she's now escaped and found peace from.

[spineless-lobster]

They won’t even let you use divine dash anymore… because of woke

[mobilesuit]

mr. quincy isaacs if you read this im free on thursday night and would like to hang out. please respond to this and then hang out with me on thursday night when I’m free.

[charming-demon-belle]

I'm aroace but i really wouldnt mind if someone expressed romantic or sexual attraction to me. I don't date but I would be happy to have a close lovey queerplatonic relationship and fuck as long as it's kinky, and I would be excited to learn about the feelings this person has and how they might differ from my own.

Enough of "oh nooooo i have a crush but they're aro/ace" more "they're aro/ace but it's still worth saying and maybe we can work out a relationship style that suits us both even if it doesnt look how i'd expect"

Having a close lovey flirty relationship where we can fuck as long as it's kinky is just how I do friends. Being aroace doesnt make me uninterested in that at all, it makes me not have the emotions that most people use to judge whether they should do that, so then I find other reasons to do it.... i.e. I feel comfortable enough around you. I would be interested to find out what things I truly am uninterested in due to being aroace. Besides just vanilla sex and dating.

[milkbreadtoast]

[nedlittle]

halfway thru yet another lesbian romance but this time the protagonist is a mechanic. if this girl so much as looks at a dress or a skirt in the remaining 47% i WILL start killing hostages that is a promise

[altschmerzes]

also seeing a lot of people lately in the aro community talking about how weird/silly/pointless/reductive/stupid/etc it is to label relationships At All and it's just like. lmao. can you understand perhaps why someone who is aromantic and perhaps entirely uninterested in and even repulsed by romance as a whole concept especially when potentially applied to their person and relationships might have an investment in being clear about their relationships and what they are and aren't. you don't have to, and that's fine, but please don't act like there's no point in it at all.

sometimes it is very important for people, especially aromantic people, to have clear labels and a clear line separating what is one kind of relationship and what isn't. that isn't to say that certain activities or sentiments or feelings are inherently part of one kind of relationship or another - i.e. kissing, 'i love you's, cohabitation, cuddling, etc - but that if someone wants to make a clear point about whatever they're doing with someone being meant in a specific way, it actually is important that people respect that and Be Cool About It.

[boopboopbitch]

I'm down for genderbending Sophie. Hell give us lesbian Eloise. But Michael Sterling?? The entire point of that book is based on his male privilege. Then there is Francesca wanting a child leading her to go back on the marriage mart. Despite her reluctance because she LOVED John. You literally see her torn because she feels like she is cheating on her dead husband. We won't get her and violet bonding over the loss of her beloved husband now because she never loved him in the first place! We wont get her crying because the baby was the last piece of john she had AND the keys to the earldom. We won't get the marriage of convenience that came from Michael becoming the earl because women can't inherit. Despite frannie being far more competent at the job than michael. Which was something that was both acknowledged and celebrated in the books! We wont get frannie reading michael to filth for taking advantage of his male privilege and ditching when shit gets hard.

This was like the one DECENT bridgerton book. The one with fleshed out characters and a form of complexity.

Why destroy this plot when you had ELOISE RIGHT FUCKING THERE.

Her book is terrible and very outdated ALONG WITH BENEDICTS!!!!! Those books needed a makeover NOT THE ONE ABOUT GRIEVING YOUR DEAD HUSBAND AND INFERTITLY.

Not the one discussing important topics women go through AND RESONATE WITH. What the fuck.

This was a misfire.

[stiffyck]

romance is so fucking boring oh my god

[offbeat-manga-ships]

TSUMI TO KAI / 罪と快 / PLEASURE & CORRUPTION by Someya You / 染谷ユウ • volume 1

[howifeltabouthim]

'I should be able to protect you. I should be able to protect your sister, and anyone else you care about. If I can't do that, then what's all of this for?'

Emily Henry, from Great Big Beautiful Life

[project-sekai-facts]

Out of all the ships, which would you say are the most heavily implied in-game?

generally i have a rule of no shipping on this blog and will ignore any asks i get about it but you know what i'll do this one because idk sounds fun. and also if it's canon i get free pass.

the thing you have to remember is that this is an idol game. idol games/franchises like love live/bandori/enstars etc are known for ship baiting to hell and back but never actually doing anything about it because, well, money. even though they'll tease at lots of ships because that way you make more fans happy the writers often have more obvious favorites (sometimes if one that they don't really write becomes popular within fandom they'll add it in as well), and this is definitely the case with project sekai. will they ever make any characters be official couples? i dunno, but it's unlikely unless they decide to pull a D4DJ (that said prsk isn't subtle about the fact that Mizuki is trans and they did address that gay people exist that one time, so there's always a chance). anyway

it's explicitly stated in the text that An views the events of Buddy Funny Spend Time as romantic. In her Peak Excitement card story she calls it a date and the way that she, her dad and Mizuki talk about it is in a not-platonic way. Out of the four from that event though, she is the only one who seems to view it as an actual date. So she's canonically romantically interested in Kohane. Oh and Kohane is attracted to her and is very heavily implied to reciprocate if the An wedding event wasn't obvious enough about it.

also i wrote this that one time

other than that there's definitely some other instances of characters showing attraction to each other, and some things that are very much written to have romantic undertones that fans can interpret in that way if they choose to, and also the use of daisuki on like 6 ships (which is the idol game's favorite word for love because it's more ambiguous), and some cover songs that are explicitly romantic but then again you can do the "it's just a song" excuse. the above two examples are the most explicitly stated ships though. at the end of the day at least we technically have two canon ships even if it's only confirmed in the text from one side and they aren't dating because as long as the feelings are there that's really what counts as canon, right? like who cares if they're dating it's incredibly unlikely that the game will ever do that so it's not really worth arguing over which ones are more likely to date.