#lovers discourse

[onlyfangz]

ive definitely talked abt this before, but i literally cannot relate to the posts that are like "ohhh you guys ship them romantically when theyre soo much more interesting as friends". i contain multitudes. i think they are best friends. i think they are lovers. i think they are soulmates in a way that cant be categorised. these statements dont conflict.

[questions-about-blorbos]

reblog if you ship a ship that's unhealthy, toxic and fucked up

[bebx]

“enemies to lovers as a fictional trope is harmful because it normalizes and romanticizes abuse and toxicity” my brother in Christ, touch. grass. they fuck while trying to murder each other and also they use each other’s blood as lube and yeah they look hot as fuck. what are you going to do about it?

[funeral]

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

[soracities]

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (trans. Richard Howard) [transcript in ALT]

[thirdity]

Despite the difficulties of my story, despite discomforts, doubts, despairs, despite impulses to be done with it, I unceasingly affirm love, within myself, as a value.

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

[alexa-nowak]

Fandom culture has changed so much, I honestly just don't get it anymore

It used to be absolutely normal to like morally questionable or straight up irredeemable characters, there was no "if you like a bad guy, you are agreeing with the bad guy" in my 2013

Now nearly in every fandom villain lovers are getting bullied, fandoms are busy protecting pixel's feelings, while severely hurting real people's mental health with this neverending flood of toxicity

And it genuinely upsets me, because villains and the whole concept of liking "against the good guys" characters in media/ literature/ art/ etc was always a safe space for outcasts and people who felt rejected by society, for being queer, for just being different and unable to fit in for any reason

And seeing that even inside online fandom culture villain lovers are getting nothing but this bs is heartbreaking

And all this discussion about "healthy relationship with imaginary bf" is the whole different bucket of crap that I would waffle about at some point

How these people are doing in literature classes, I mean, every other classical book has some kind of toxic love story, do they need a trigger warning for every book or something

[justcallmemrslupin]

Why Wolfstar Is the Most Dangerous Harry Potter Ship (and Why the Fandom Needs to Talk About It)

I've been in the Harry Potter fandom for over 20 years. I watched it grow, evolve, twist, and turn. I saw fanfiction rise, canon conclude, and the fandom shift focus countless times. And still, one thing baffles me more than anything else: how deeply romanticized and normalized Wolfstar has become.

At first, I didn’t care. People were writing fanfiction. They wanted queer representation. They were dreaming up alternate stories — and as long as it stayed within the realm of fiction and imagination, I had no issue with it.

But it’s not like that anymore. Now, Wolfstar is treated like a canon pairing, and if you even dare to question it, you're accused of being bigoted, ignorant, or told to leave the fandom altogether. And that’s heartbreaking, not just because of how hostile the discourse has become, but because the ship itself is incredibly toxic, and no one seems willing to acknowledge it.

Let’s be clear: Sirius Black was not a good friend to Remus Lupin.

• He exposed Remus' most dangerous, painful secret to an enemy (Snape) and used him as a weapon.

• He wished for a full moon out of boredom.

• He trusted Peter Pettigrew over Remus.

• He didn’t even leave Remus anything in his will.

Wolfstar is dangerous because it romanticizes a friendship that was never balanced, never healthy, and never based in mutual care. It takes one of the most traumatizing betrayals in the books — the "prank" — and brushes it off as “teenage drama.” But what if James hadn’t stopped Snape? Remus would have killed someone. He would have spent his life in Azkaban — or worse.

And yet, Sirius said he’d rather die than betray a friend? He already did. And still, the fandom turns him into a misunderstood romantic hero and turns Remus into either his pining lover or a side note.

Meanwhile, Tonks — who loved Remus deeply, chose him in spite of the risks, and built a family with him — is hated, mocked, and erased. Simply because she married someone the fandom decided didn’t belong to her.

I once posted about this on TikTok and got flooded with hate. One girl even said: “Don’t f** with me, Lupin is gay and Tonks is a b**h.”

What?! When did we become so toxic that we can’t even respect canon relationships without being accused of bigotry?

You want to ship? Go ahead. But don’t pretend Wolfstar is some great love story. It wasn’t even a good friendship. And don’t attack people who see Remus Lupin for the kind, complex, human character he really was. Because what matters, as Sirius himself once said in the films, is the side we choose to act on.

And Remus Lupin chose good. Always.

[ingravinoveritas]

Thinking about the people complaining about Michael and David aging too much to play Aziraphale and Crowley in season 3 and how Michael has given more than enough hints over the past five years to indicate that he would be happy to play Aziraphale (with David as Crowley, of course) for the rest of his life...

[fervi-g]

to be read pile

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments // Roland Barthes

Vineland // Thomas Pynchon

Infinite Jest // David Foster Wallace

White Nights // Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When I Sing, Mountains Dance // Irene Solà

[smokefalls]

What does “thinking of you” mean? It means: forgetting “you” (without forgetting, life itself is not possible) and frequently waking out of that forgetfulness.

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (translated by Richard Howard)

[questions-about-blorbos]

people who ship a ship that's unhealthy, toxic and fucked up and do not shy away from the fact their ship is unhealthy, toxic and fucked up by making them act all "lovey dovey" toward each other, or watering down the severity of the things that canonically make their ship a fucked up ship, in fanfics — and so they embrace the fact that their ship is fucked up, but that's the thing that makes their ship so hot, sexy, complex and fascinating — I am declaring my undying love and loyalty to you

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

✨writing rant because i’m UNWELL and someone said enemies to lovers is “overdone”✨

okay listen.

i don’t care how “overdone” the trope is. let her fall in love with the enemy prince. let him smile like a knife and lie like a prayer. let her fall anyway. and then let her stab him with a hairpin. a hairpin!! we deserve this.

this isn't about originality. this is about execution and emotional violence and aesthetically pleasing betrayal.

tropes aren’t dead. they’re haunting us in new outfits.

every trope is a reusable little narrative skeleton and you get to dress it in whatever cursed, beautiful, petty, yearning flesh your heart desires. you can take enemies to lovers and make it toxic, or tender, or tragic. you can give them shared trauma. you can make them childhood friends turned enemies turned lovers turned enemies again. you can make the stabbing literal or metaphorical. you can make it an almost-stabbing, where she presses the blade to his throat and doesn’t do it. you can make her do it and then sob in his arms while he bleeds out whispering her name like a prayer he never meant to say out loud.

you can make it GAY.

that’s the power of tropes. they’re not restrictive. they’re launchpads. they give readers expectations so you can BREAK them. or better--fulfill them in devastating, soul-twisting ways.

also. like. if you think a trope is “overdone” maybe it’s not the trope that’s the problem. maybe it’s just being written without any real teeth. no emotional bite. no stakes. no tension. no pain. and that’s not the trope’s fault. that’s just boring writing.

give me the obsessive yearning. give me the knife-to-throat confessions. give me the battlefield truce that turns into a five-second pause before they go right back to trying to kill each other. give me quiet moments in enemy territory where they realize they’re not so different. give me the one bed. give me the i hate you but i’d burn down a kingdom for you and hate myself for it.

let the prince kneel at her feet, kiss her knuckles like he’d never crush them, and then go home and report to his war council like nothing happened. let her wear the hairpin he gave her while plotting his assassination. let them both suffer about it. let them choose each other anyway. or don’t. let them fail. let them fall apart in the final act and still reach for each other across the ashes.

i literally do not care how many times we’ve seen it. i want it again. i want it done well. i want it done with spite and softness and aching inevitability. i want to feel like the betrayal was worth it. i want to scream into my hands and text my writer friends like “why would you do this to me” while secretly living for it.

write your trope. write it the way it’s been done before or write it sideways and backwards and messy. just write it with emotion. and a little hairpin. and blood under their fingernails.

okay bye

Rin T.

[soracities]

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (trans. Richard Howard) [ID in ALT]

[clispectors]

love, jealousy & rivalry

a lover's discourse by roland barthes / challengers (luca guadagnino) / asking about you by eloise klein healy

[theweeklydiscourse]

There's just something about enemies to lovers antis that is just so funny. Because they go on, shaming womans/girls over silly fantasies saying that they are doomed to be in toxic relationships while being like "this piece of boring white bread and (most of times) toxic masculinity and immaturity hero is actually an much better lover interest for the FMC because *check notes* he's... her friend and does nice-ish things to her sometimes ig" like gurl how arent you catching the irony? Especifically if it's an woman saying crap like that.

Yep this is about kataang and Malina (thought Malina stans cant even say he was nice-ish to her)

They’re blind to how simplistic their line of reasoning is. However, that simplistic worldview brings them a weird kind of satisfaction. Not only does it validate their feelings of moral and intellectual superiority, it also allows them to indulge in salacious and sensational claims and gain internet points as a result. This blindness and simplistic thinking creates a funny scenario where, in fiction, they rail against grandiose villainy, but ignore the more realistic and mundane toxicity of their fave wholesome love interest™.

In ATLA’s case, I think this is partially due to most people’s foggy memory of the show. It’s become apparent to me that many people don’t actually remember certain details and are willing to smooth over the gaps in their memory with personal headcanons. This is how we got to this bizarre reality where people have reframed Kataang as some kind of uniquely progressive and ahead-of-its-time relationship, when in the actual show, it checks nearly every box for your garden variety 2000s heterosexual relationship. Nostalgia compels people to make excuses for the fact that the Kataang relationship centres Aang at every turn and neglects Katara’s end of their romantic arc.

In Malina’s case, it’s even more ridiculous because Mal is overtly worse as a love interest and was largely disliked by the Shadow and Bone fandom for a long time. It’s only in recent years that his reputation has been rehabilitated (and even then…) Then you have the odd contrarian with a vague recollection of the series who tries to gaslight people into thinking that Mal was good actually and that we were just being dramatic. Sure, Mal doesn’t have a particularly sizeable body count, but he commits the arguably greater crime of being an emotionally abusive boyfriend to Alina. He’s not even toxic in an interesting way like the Darkling, he’s just toxic in a way that will remind the teenage readership of their real-life terrible boyfriends. It’s downright comical that Bardugo ever thought Mal could ever be likeable.

The irony is palpable. The toxic masculinity and mundane emotional abuse is something they sweep under the rug because they are so persuaded by the image of a wholesome love interest. They can’t understand why more realistic depictions of relationships in fiction would be more impactful and evocative than that which is fantastical.