#wildbow could have done something compelling with it! he didn't but he could have!

[lakesbian]

i poked around the fandom a bit last night and it was very funny to me that alec/taylor and alec/brian seem to be significantly more popular pairings than aishalec. whether you see their relationship as being more on the romantic side or more on the platonic side, it’s very textually explicit that aisha is the only undersider who even approaches understanding what’s going on w/ alec, and it’s also very textually explicit that alec is the only undersider who sees aisha on a specific meaningful and validating level for her. so it’s exceedingly funny to me that people have a habit of tossing aisha (whose problem is Literally that she’s chronically ignored LMAO) aside in favor of pairing alec w/ a girl who tends to ungenerously + hypocritically regard him as having no real interiority beyond “unempathetic sociopathic rapist” or a boy who consistently wins the Worm’s Most Heterosexual Man Award.

to be clear, i don’t think it’s impossible to do something interesting with alec/taylor interactions or alec/brian interactions, but i do think you have to work a lot harder to squeeze something compelling out of it--and i really don’t get why people aren’t as interested in exploring aisha/alec interactions in fan content when it’s textually the singular most significant human connection he has. if you want to start poking around in alec’s psyche, pairing him up with the one person who actually gets into his psyche in canon seems like it should be the most obvious choice, but almost no one goes for it.

i also have to admit that alec/taylor shipping always makes me snicker a bit because her canonical first reaction to him is is literally “Hmm. Not really into....Effeminate Boys." taylor might be a weird straight girl who can’t appreciate alec’s gnc swag, but i know in my heart that aisha (also bisexual, To Me,) saw him and immediately went “Ohohoho. Hohoho. Ohohoho. Nice.” 

as for brian. he is definitely remarkably heterosexual but the idea of him being a weird repressed bisexual similar to how many people read taylor is very funny to me. like so:

(...you could actually get something interesting out of how brian & alec are both traumatized boys who are trying very hard (with varying degrees of success) not to turn into their father figures, but they differ in that alec is uninterested in masculinity to the point where he experiences homophobia for it in canon whereas brian is obsessed with being masculine to a self-destructive fault. i’m compelled by the idea of brian trying to convince alec to do some self-defense training w/ a misguided appeal to his sense of masculinity only to end up vaguely jarred and confused when alec informs him that 1. his current t-shirt and leggings are both from the women’s section, so he’s pretty sure he’s got nothing left in the masculinity department, and 2. he’s good with sitting back and letting brian + bitch’s dogs handle the messy physical violence for him.)