#vampires are also very much for the queers but I’m specifically talking about twilight here

[squirreljc2]

Angels are to queer people with religious trauma what vampires are to straight women

[tortoisesforhire]

Shipping!! And couple dynamics in fiction

So I’ve been looking a lot at like, specifically the couples that I ship and support in various media and the couples who I absolutely abhor and want to die in a fiery fire of fire, and I started asking myself...why? Why Alex? Why do you hate them so? Oh I’m so glad you asked self! I shall tell you!

Let’s look at a case study for What I Absolutely Hate OMG Why; Buffy and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Muahahahaa!! Yes, I know, How DArE I betray the Ultimate Ship! But see, I don’t really care.) I haaaaate BuffyxAngel, I hate them in the beginning of Buffy, I hate them in Angel and I hate them in the comics. They are a garbage couple of garbage-ness. (sorry not sorry) 

I’ll explain; so Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fifteen year old girl gifted with Chosen Magical Girl powers to save the universe from monsters, she and her loyal scoobies go on to slay, smash and otherwise pwn the dark forces of the night. Horay! Only alas! Here comes Angel, he’s Dark and Spooky and Filled with Self Loathing! What is a poor girl to do? He’s chiseled and mysterious with a wounded heart of gold all wrapped up nicely for Buffy to save. With her ‘love’. Ahem. 

From the get-go this relationship is Hella toxic, Angel’s entire arc when involved with Buffy revolved around Buffy; whether its Buffy saving the day or Buffy saving him. Saving him from himself, from his past, from his evil-sex-curse (don’t even get me started on that little bit of writing I mean wtf Joss?) all the while Angel is over a hundred years old and Buffy is sixteen. She is a baby! Infant little slayer tasked with saving (and often dying) for the world, and here comes this wounded heart vampire boy who leeches off of her goodness. All they do is take from one another, but the narrative is set up so that we believe their soulmates, doomed to be apart for all time. It’s gross. 

And they represent a very prevalent relationship archetype in fiction; Doomed Soulmates. This idea that an innocent badass naive teen girl gets swooped off her feet by a wounded hero with a dark past and the two prance off into the sunset in all their fractured glory. (Hello Twilight, Vampire Diaries, Shadowhunters etc etc) It simultaneously manages to cast the female in the role of both victim and savior while the man is reduced to Sexy Fallen Angel who serves only to further her story. 

Now, let’s flip this and look at some relationships that are Wonderful. Since I started picking on Buffy I’ll stick with that theme for a bit and talk about one of my Favorite Couples (srsly I love them) Buffy x Spike. (I bet you thought I was gonna talk about Willow x Tara, don’t worry, I’ll get there.) I adore Buffy and Spike’s relationship for several reasons but one of which was because it wasn’t planned. Buffy and Angel were very obviously a part of the story plot from the get go, their narrative beats were very expected and typical. Buffy and Spike? They were so organic. They were allowed to develop and grow and change as time went on. A big problem I have with the aformentioned horrible relationship is the age difference, it’s a weirdly common thing in fantasy fiction where the guy is like a hundred years old and the girl is like, a baby. And yeah, Spike is also like a hundred years old with a dark past, but at the point where they start their relationship Buffy is an adult, she’s been through some shit, they’re both wounded and fractured and their respective experienced place them on equal footing. 

Honestly, there’s so much in their relationship dynamic that I love and idk if I have the space to put it all here so I’ll just cover the highlights. So a) their beginning is very unhealthy and it is allowed to be unhealthy. It’s not framed as innocently romantic or pure or whatever. It’s rough and sharp edged and exactly what you would expect from two people as damaged as they are. They hurt each other, and then save each other and hate each other, but love each other. And this is allowed to be unhealthy to the point where both of them say it and try and untangle themselves from it. B) They get each other, Angel was always trying to subtly control Buffy. To pull or push her into something else, he saw her as this pure righteous savior figure, so she felt she had to be that. Spike see’s her as a warrior, someone who has died multiple times and isn’t okay, someone who has killed and learned to live with the scars. Someone like him. He accepts her exactly as she is, and she learns from this to see him as he is and accept him (and herself) more fully. C) They act like a real couple acts. Real couples don’t just wrap themselves around one another and coo and sigh about how in love they are 24/7. Real couples hang out, real couples don’t live in this extreme hot/cold dynamic, they just interact normally. And Buffy and Spike, no matter where they are in their relationship have that dynamic, that easy camaraderie where they can just exist with one another. They’ve seen each others absolute worst and love each other in spite of it. They’re complex and they grow together, into and around one another. It’s great, it’s beautiful, I have a lot of feelings. 

But the real difference between them is a fundamental difference in equality. The Angel/Buffy dynamic was never equal. And it frames emotional abuse tactics as romance and I find that quite creepy. 

I think the real difference between Good Couples and Bad Couples is in the intentions of the writer when writing them. With Buffy/Angel we were being sold something, this Tragic Romance picture. With Ross/Rachel we’re being sold on the ultimate Will They/Won’t They (they shouldn’t), with Sam/Jack it’s the quintessential Jock/Nerd. They decided on an image before hand and then tried to tailor the narrative to suit that image. Whereas Good Couples, couples that really resonate with an audience are couples that result from the narrative itself, not the other way around. 

Tara x Willow showed up out of no where and and struck deep, all of us little baby queers saw that and were like Yes! That is Me! Right there! And then they developed like a real couple would, they went through real struggles (mostly, I mean I doubt any of us have ever lost our memories due to an evil goddess from another dimension but hey, who knows) we got to bear witness to their love and cheer it on from beginning to end (the ending that shall not be named). 

I’ve always loved relationships that take characters from really different places and allow them to grow and learn about one another in new and exciting ways. Monica and Chandler who are so different but who are able to appreciate and celebrate those differences with one another. Cory and Topanga who share a childhood and are one another biggest fan throughout their whole lives, growing and sharing those experiences. Mary and Matthew, Claire and Jamie, Jim and Pam, Jessica and Luke, all these couples are couples who are allowed to be broken together. Allowed to grow and change and aren’t stuck in the same stagnant place where they started. 

Romance is a fun fictional genre, it’s exciting to explore and endlessly interesting when done right. But it’s easy for it to get stale. I want stories that bend the rules, who discard them altogether. I want a romance that changes, give me a story where two people love one another in continually changing ways. Don’t just tell me two people are in love, prove it. Prove to me that they are soulmates, allow them to prove it to each other. 

One of my favorite stories, and I talk about it all the time, is OurImpavidHeroine’s Wuko-verse. She starts with Mako and Wu, weaving this exquisite love story between two people who could not be more different but who love one another and then make it work. They have problems and work through them. Then she introduces this third character Qi who just shoves in and makes themselves at home and now we get to explore what that is like, and how that changes things. She approaches Polyamory not as some kind of kink, it’s not about sex, she just follows these characters in their relationship and love and trust for one another and it’s so organic and beautiful that you can’t help but root for them. She takes your expectations and destroys them, disregards what you thought you were here for, well now you’re here for this! And that, I think is what romance is about. It’s not about Happily Ever After, it’s about How Do They Make It Work. How do they fight for each other, with one another, how do they grow, where do they compromise, how do they raise children, what about career, what about this or that or whatever. She allows them to be real. 

Most romances, I find, don’t allow their characters to be real. To act like real people. I want to read a Cinderella story where she has to adjust and learn to be royalty, how does she go from extreme abuse and poverty to suddenly being in charge of a country? How does he help her? What about the kingdom? How do they feel about having a maid as a queen? I want that story. I’m tired of romances that only exist in the beginning of a relationship. The ‘falling in love’ part. I’m tired of ending at the first kiss. I’m tired of this whispy ‘happily ever after’ bullshit. Give me the grit! Give me the drama! Give! Me! The Meat! 

In Amazon’s Mrs. Maisel, season two see’s her parents trying to reconnect. Her mother runs away to Paris because she finds she has no place or purpose with her husband or daughter anymore. She’s invisible at home so she leaves and finds herself in Paris. Remembers how to be happy and alone once more. When he shows up after he’s done throwing a fit he takes the time to live with her in Paris, to fall in love again, to fall in love with what she loves, to listen to how she feel’s. It’s this beautiful picture of two people in later years learning how to love one another again. That’s the sort of romance I’m here for, not this bubblegum high-school bullshit. Don’t give me Love At First Sight, that’s crap, give me Love After Fifty Years, Love Eventually, Love after War, Love in Spite of Everything. That’s the kind of relationship we’re missing in fiction.