#and ~all the relationships being explored not just romance

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

I'm aroacespec (and honestly confused about where I fall on that spectrum, but I do know I'm sex/romance favorable) and tbh my relationship with shipping is weird.

There are some ships I look at and I'm like "how can you see this as anything but romantic" and there are other ships where I'm like "okay but why do we have to ship them, can't they just be friends?" and it's almost always the total opposite of what the fandom majority's view is. For example, my Sonic "how can you see this as anything but romantic" ship is Espilver, and my "okay but why do we have to ship them, can't they just be friends?" ship is Silvaze.

I will say that something I've noticed is there tends to be a double-standard with allo people (specifically cishet people) when it comes to ships. You get a ton of "why can't they just be friends" with slash and femslash ships, but then those same people will ship a het pairing that look at each other in a single frame. I don't know if it's something that's more obvious to me because I'm gay myself (or even if it's more obvious because I'm aroacespec specifically), but it's weird to me. I choose to look at it this way: if this was a het ship with the same character dynamic, would people still say "why can't they just be friends?"

That's not to say aroace people are in the wrong for looking at a pairing and saying "can't they just be friends? Why do we have to ship them?" but with a lot of cishet people specifically, it feels like there's a lot of people perpetuating a borderline homophobic double-standard. I get it when it's something like Scott and Jay from Ninjago, but so many masc characters' dynamics are canonically given homoerotic or even just romantic undertones (a good example of this being, in my opinion, Sonadow; there's not an almost 3 and a half hour long Sonadow iceberg video on YouTube for no reason. As far as I'm aware it's the longest Sonic-related iceberg video on YouTube that covers exclusively official content) which is why people tend to gravitate towards those ships. I could do an entire analysis on why gay ships tend to have bigger followings than het ships but if I did this would get too long lmao. I will once again point to the Sonadow iceberg video though.

I generally use shipping to explore my own relationship with my aroace-ness, and usually I do that using characters I either headcanon as aroace in some way or who are canonically aroace, because I can relate to those experiences. It's kinda weird to me to see other aroace people acting like doing that is bad or wrong, because usually that's what people are doing, and even if that's not what's going on, fanfiction doesn't affect canon.

There is no right or wrong way to participate in fandom (unless you're harassing people and/or actively putting people in danger), no matter what you identify as.

Basically: People should be allowed to do what they want, if something bothers you that bad there's nothing wrong with blocking a person or tag.

(I might've gotten off subject a few times, sorry lol)

Okay, that thing about blocking tags inspired me to look through my blocked tags to see what ships I've blocked and here's my petty aroace thoughts on all of them without naming names lmao

Fanon het ship. They've never given any indication that they know of each other's existence. Her girlfriend is right there.

Canon het ship. Had the chemistry of two wet paper bags. Literally just shoehorned in there because god forbid any story exist without a romance subplot.

Semi-canon het ship. I'm mostly neutral about them. Just unnecessary.

Fanon mlm ship. Literally brothers?? I don't care that one of them is adopted, they grew up together?? As brothers??

Fanon het ship. I don't care what you call their relationship. You can call it professional, platonic, familial, just please don't call it romantic.

Semi-canon het ship. Again, completely unnecessary. God forbid a man convince a woman to become a villain without there being ~attraction~

Fanon het ship. She is 14?? And he is like 30??

Semi-semi-canon het ship. He did have a crush on her when he was, like, 14 but he's a grown adult now and she's the most lesbian-looking woman to ever exist and they're the most found family siblings to ever find a family

Fanon het ship. LET MEN AND WOMEN BE FRIENDS. LET MEN AND WOMEN BE PLATONICALLY MARRIED.

Fanon mlm ship. I personally see them more as brothers. But whatever floats your boat.

Semi-canon het ship. Just really shoehorned. I don't like the woman very much. I liked her more when she was allowed to be a badass without being a ~flirty badass~

Fanon mlm ship. Again. Adopted brothers. Gross.

Canon het ship. I've seen many things from this director. He's a creative man. He couldn't think of a way to move the plot forward without a smooch?? He couldn't create a series that didn't have an unnecessary love triangle??

Semi-canon het ship. The man isn't coming back for S2 and boy folly gee am I glad

Fanon het ship. Not my cup of tea. Just let them be friends

good lord I have a lot more ship tags blocked than I thought

anyway, this is your daily reminder to just block stuff you don't want to see and move on

[littlehollyleaf]

So. Those Dead Boy Detectives, huh?

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[bonefall]

jayfeather and moleflight toxic yaoi…

Oh wow there's not even anything in the Molejay tag. Is this pair so rare it's not been done yet?

Jayfeather and Moleflight, toxic yaoi, "I named myself after the time I trounced your angelic ass" and "I've personally assigned my entire afterlife to trying to prevent you from causing chaos." They want to kiss each other sooo bad it makes them look stupid. The rituals, they are so intricate.

[cathodic-clairvoyant]

There's a lot about discussion of hdwr that baffles me (not all discussion to be clear, because i do think there's a lot of good discussion about hdwr. But equally so are there the ones that make you wonder if you're reading the same story) and I think one that is especially annoying is the constant infantilization of miwa as this passive eternal victim. It drives me up a wall because this is quite literally an issue she's struggled with within the text of the story! She had an arc about how she dislikes how people treat her this way like towards the beginning of the story! And like even ignoring that, this story is about like nuanced and realistic portrayals of being in relationships and learning how to navigate them and so it's like what's the point if you're going to immediately reduce the characters to "the victim" and "the victimizers?" Is that even interesting? Is that a useful lens to look at interpersonal relationships?

[helpimstuckinafandom]

Me starting another bg3 run where I will make virtually all the same decisions in mostly the same order as if there isn't different branching paths

[my-current-obsession]

My hyper-specific type when it comes to otome guys:

- Absolutely pathetic - Cannot speak to a girl normally to save his life - Tries to be calm/aloof, but turns tsundere when flustered enough - A good and pure man at heart, yet does some questionable things - ...Little Red Riding Hood???

[lou-syd]

Uncanny Spider-Man is a fun enough mini but I am begging on my hands and knees to let rushed romances go, you're already asking a lot trying to make me not question the whole creepy crawler thing too much don't ask me to pretend this isn't contrived to give Kurt more drama when there's enough to do with his character as is.

[employee052]

ive been watching a lot of ppls playthrus of tspud recently, so id figure id draw some narry oz shenanigans bc it was a hell of a vibe

(is that pose uncomfortable?? perhaps. do i know personally? no sadly. is it a vibe to be watching yt with the bestie? of course)

[orcelito]

So I've had no time to write today bc work etc etc but I've been thinking about it like All day and

I have chapter 17 all plotted out, and tbh could potentially write it in a matter of days, brain willing. It's finally back to Not action, which as fun as action is to write its also fucking Hard. So it'll be nice not having to agonize over the sound of a fucking chain (Twice) etc etc. Add in the fact that it's gonna be angsty as hell (angst is always the Easiest for me to write) & I rly think I could knock this one out quickly.

And the Great news is that. Examining the timeline and what I have planned...

Wolfwood is definitely arriving in chapter 18. And not at the end like I'd suspected. No, he's probably gonna be there towards the Start.

I've gotten through the two most difficult arcs to write for early ITNL, so the ball is really rolling now. We are Finally getting places...

[sonknuxadow]

i am so tired of fandoms who cant take their shipping goggles off for five seconds i am so tired of people trying to make everything about romance when its not i am so tired of people being so desperate to find a ship for every single character even if there are no reasonable options for them i am so tired of characters being written like completely different people for the sake of a ship i am so tired of people acting like the only meaningful relationships characters can have with eachother are romantic ones i am so tired of people only seeing certain characters as half of their ship and not caring about them in any other context Sorry for being a hater but i have had enough

[kashilascorner]

just watched notting hill which is supposed to be like an epitome of a good romcom and... Well. Let's just say i highly disagree

[surpriserose]

So im watching this playlist of a bunch of youtubers reviewing the last decade of goodreads awards winner by genre because i love people rightfully shitting on goodreads but like? One of the ones i watched was romance because yeah obviously and the woman who reviewed was like really into the romance genre and im geniunely not trying to be a cunt but i dont understand how someone can be geniunely into the romance genre like!!!! You like books where nothing fucking happens? And a lot of her criticisms were like there wasnt enough romance because it was just a subplot or there was too much stuff from other genres and like.....yeah? You have to like you cant carry an entire book on one relationship like sure thats an opinion because i literally dont understand romance books but like????? Like idk im not trying to be a cunt but like WHAT is appealing about a pure romance book???

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Goddess of the River

reimagining of the ancient Hindu epic the Mahabharata

centres the river goddess Ganga, who cares for the godlings who live along her banks and ignores humanity, until she’s cursed into the body of a mortal, to birth the godlings as children

when she returns to her god form, she’s forced to leave her last son behind as a prince, and her love for him intertwines her in mortal affairs, as he becomes involved in what will eventually become a tragic war

parenthood, duty, politics

[atlas-affogato]

When starting this work I said to myself "you know what, not enough fanfiction explores family dynamics along side platonic and romantic ones, I'm going to really focus on the fact that they each have people they care about" and that has been BITING ME IN THE ASS THIS WHOLE GODDAMN TIME

[casasupernovas]

Remember ages ago when I said Freema did an interview talking about Martha and what she was and wasn't happy with in regards to the story? I found it!

Transcript:

Interviewer: ...Do you still think about her? How do you think about Martha in the year 2019.

Freema: Ah yeah I just did a convention with David [Tennant] recently actually and he said something that um, I hadn't heard before, and he was asked about that relationship between the two chatacters and he said 'I think that the Doctor wasn't fair on her' and I sorta looked at him and I was like...I've never heard your take on that before because I knew at the time you know she was...for me there was definitely a kind of beat that they struck on that stayed maybe a little bit too long. It was the unrequited storyline an I think they stopped exploring her as a fully rounded human being in light of that and Russell [T. Davies] did say you know, it's important to him though that people can sometimes see that...you know love doesn't always have to be reciprocated and it's okay to kind of...most of us probably have that in common that we have unreciprocated...emotions than reciprocated and I was like no that's cool I get that but people also tune in for escapism and for romance and all of the magic and the, you know, the imagination so sometimes to be like grounded back down into hard truth isn't very attractive. *Laughs* So I kind of felt like she got stuck a little bit amd when people ask me if if I would go back it would only be to explore her as a fully rounded person more and she had so much going on and then it got stuck for whatever reason. But I had the best time and I feel like there's so much more potential to that person.