#and I do think f/f romances are important but I'll only ship them if they exist in a context I'm interested in

[happy10thousandyears]

I need to draw my lesbian girlies .

[lai-mar]

You know, I really appreciate that you’re out here defending this widely hated relationship. Maybe it’s because the anime-only fans are a very vocal majority right now, but I’ve seen people who ‘watched the anime then read the manga’ *still* shit on Laios and Marcille’s friendship. Like you don’t have to ship it but if you deny that they care about each other or deny that they have chemistry, did you even read the comic?? ‘Oh they’re just siblings/siblings-in-law!’ have you ever had a sibling. have you ever had a sibling-in-law. they do not act like siblings they act like *intimate* best friends. ‘Ridiculously comfortable around each other’ best friends. They have a relationship outside of Falin, that is what develops over the entire damn story. 90 chapters. What comic were you reading where you think Marcille can barely stand him.

Thanks for the ask! Very cathartic to see this. About to go on another rant again lol (will be repeating some of my old points but yeah I need to get it out of my system)

"Defending widely hated relationship" + "anime-only fans are a very vocal majority"

Okay, let me play devil's advocate for a second here. Let's say I despise L/M as a ship and it squicks me out greatly and I think it's a boring ship of pairing the male lead and the female lead. What should I do? Obviously go into L/M posts and argue about it instead of blocking the tag and stating my stance my calmly when someone asks me like your average fan who knows how to curate their fandom experience.

Okay, more devil's advocating. I despise L/M as a ship but I have read the manga and engaged with it critically and understood its themes. Which means I like L+M as a friendship in the same way I like the themes of eating and life cycle and the friendship between the party and the worldbuilding. Because all of these are core parts of the story told. So what I do is to block all shippers and ship tag and look for platonic fics and fanart like Your Average Fan Who Curates Their Experience.

Like I'm sorry. I genuinely feel some people are so caught up in the intense fanonisation of DM that they start forgetting about canon. And I KNOW I am not the only one feeling this way because I read the notes on my posts and other people's posts and there's a lot of good thoughts on this. Plenty of people appreciate them. But to some people in the wider fandom, are we reading the same manga? Our male lead and female lead are friends who save each other. They are not together canonically. So canonically, they don't even get into the way of shipping?????? People can have important intimate friendships outside of romance??? And it's a canon well established friendship? I would say it's one of the most well developed dynamics in the series that we see? We get shown and not told? We see images and words and interpret them in our brains?

Devil's advocate level 3. Let's say mainstream fanonisation of DM is real. F/M is a canon ship and they get together and they get married in the end and L+M become sibling in laws. Maybe L/K is a thing. This still does not erase the entire journey L+M and co went on to save Falin. This still does not erase their friendship and chemistry.

"‘Oh they’re just siblings/siblings-in-law!’ have you ever had a sibling. have you ever had a sibling-in-law."

Okay. I do have a sibling. At this point I've long accepted this much be some sort of cultural difference and some weird American / Western thing I am not used to. And the hilarious thing about DM is that we do get canon siblings!!! It's the fucking premise! Falin and Laios!! And they're fun!

I'm sorry but this must be some cultural difference. Like no younger sibling is calling their older sibling by their GIVEN NAME. The sheer disrespect. I'll be scandalised. As a person with a sibling I don't understand the fandomisation of making non related people siblings in fanon? I'm calling my friends my friends, not siblings. My sibling is like a sibling to me. My friends are like friends to me. Idk. I've written the word sibling so many times that it doesn't seem like a word anymore.

Obviously these are just my personal thoughts but I feel like objectively, there has been a fandomwide trend of grabbing a canon friendship between a man and a woman and going "THEY ARE SO SIBLINGS CORE XD" (not siblings in canon) (not related) (don't even look similar) (they're friends). A lot of times this is valid and even fun but sometimes I get the feeling people sometimes push the fanon sibling thing to show they're squicky about them romantically. To which I can only say: a man and a woman can genuinely only be friends. If you need to magically make them related so you / other people won't see their friendship romantically... it feels like a step back. Why are we doing heteronormativity.

I think I'm the type of person who enjoys and mains man + woman friendships in fandoms (which are, unsurprisingly, unpopular as ships and even as friendships until I start spreading propaganda and pumping fics on Ao3), and I think one of the things that get me is. A man who could be attracted to women + a woman who could be attracted to men having great chemistry but staying friends. I want to stress this is different from a man who is not interested in women / romance + a woman who is not interested in men / romance because there is almost zero chance of a reciprocal romantic relationship going on. But for the first case, which I feel like many people dumb down to "straight people shipping", it's even more precious for them to stay friends and not give into the heternormative expectations despite one or both of them possibly (but not necessarily) being heterosexual. Like, here are two people who could date each other but they're like "nah we work better as friends, so we stay friends". To me, this is one fantastic argument for friendship. Not everything has to be romantic. Even better if they considered and thought about the logistics, but decide their relationship is more special non romantically. Having a taste of how their relationship could go and going "thanks, but no thanks". Is this not a great display of sincere and stable friendship compared to people going "lol they can't work as a ship because they simply physically cannot tolerate the thought of each other romantically". I'm rambling here but I feel like this is what I feel across various dynamics and fandoms. At this point, I think somehow non romantic relationships genuinely fascinate me more than ships. Save me QPR save me.

"They have a relationship outside of Falin"

I feel like some manga readers have missed the point so badly when it comes to this. It's hilarious. They have a relationship outside of Falin it's the whole fucking point about coming to terms with grief and death! You know, one of the core themes of this story that you finished!

And of course this doesn't erase the love they have for Falin. Falin is clearly beloved and their main motivation, but hilariously enough (for the L+M deniers), the manga shows Laios and Marcille's "true" innermost desires being granted and it's not about reviving Falin even though they both clearly want her back and it's at the forefront of their minds. Laios turns into a monster. His curse isn't about Falin not coming back (even though that was his immediate thought), it's about him not being able to interact with monsters ever again. Marcille was traumatised by what happened to Falin (nightmare chapter) but when she turns into a dungeon lord, she goes about trying to fix the lifespans, showing her fear of loneliness and all her loved ones (NOT just a single person!!!!!!!!) dying before her. You can argue they didn't revive Falin with magic lord powers because they don't trust the lion / trust their own plan of eating her, but I think the manga focuses enough on their desires for the interpretation of "the lion fulfills their innermost desires that define their existence" to work. Marcille is the one who finds Laios first after he turned back and Laios broke Marcille free from the lion's influence etc etc we know they play a part in each other's arcs. Laios says they wouldn't be on this journey if Falin hadn't been digested. Marcille says in the end she was okay with Falin not being brought back this time. Laios invites Marcille to stay with him. It's in the text.

"Boring straight ship" or whatever

This comes from what a friend said about my main duo of another fandom but it's like "why isn't [ship] more popular" "because it's easy to fall into the boring trope of pairing a man and a woman together".

And this is a thing that does happen! But not to pairings with strong canon foundation and chemistry sorry. Don't look at me, look at canon. A male/female ship with good canon support is a good ship. Why are you surprised. People like shipping characters who spend lots of time together saving each other and all that. Dare I say: sometimes (sometimes) shipping "straight people" is more respectful to their canon friendship than shoehorning them as siblings. Which I believe is true in the case of L+M.

Anyways. Well that was a nice angry rant. Sorry I had to get it out of my system. I've spend too much time writing this so I won't be doing much proofreading lol. If you've reached this point, thanks for reading <3

[valyrfia]

RE: this ask

Sorry about to go off on one, gender studies and online fan culture from an academic standpoint is a special interest of mine because being film and literature student wasn't annoying enough (participatory culture studies my beloved) 

From a general standpoint, I think the reason M/M ships in fiction have always been more popular is because male characters are historically more developed and complex. I think it’s only in recent years have their been an influx of popular F/F ships, with the added development of women on screen (e.g Clarke and Lexa, Kara and Lena, Regina and Emma, Nancy and Robin) - I think there is also a point to be made this has coincided with gender expression, genderqueerness and more general knowledge of being outside the typical gender spectrum. 

I can’t explicitly say that being in M/M fandom spaces encouraged my personal discovery of being transmasc but it certainly helped to have an avenue where I could project onto these “male” characters and see myself in them. I was so uncomfortable in my own body and what I didn’t know at the time as dysphoria, I can see why I didn’t go for F/F ships. 

There are of course a lot of “fandom elders” but young (early to late teens) afab people do make up a large bulk of it and I get why  it may be easier for them to fixate on M/M ships as a, sort of method of exploring their own sexuality and gender expression. F/F ships may hit too close to home and F/M ships are what they are trying to escape from so it leaves M/M ships to project onto. Which, unfortunately then can become warped by the persons own comphet and/or binary ideas about gender. 

A male character may have more stereotypically “feminine” traits (in terms of interests or emotional reactions) and I can see why people who also have those traits would project there own insecurities onto them, reinforcing the feminisation of the male character but not being comfortable enough in your own gender expression to genderbend the character or write them as trans. 

It’s the same reason I think mafia romance, dark romance etc etc is so popular with cishet women because they can read about a fantasy where instead of the very real every day misogyny and violence they face leading to abuse, assault and death, it brings “positives” ; protected, loved, a happy relationship. 

Which, side note. I think this has A Lot to do with y/n, self insert fics becoming “cringe”. Because, I think a lot of people just want to fuck/date a character and feel like they can’t write a self insert anymore, so just project massively onto one character, leading to a lot of these issues. I don’t think Tony Stark/Peter Parker would be as popular as it is if people just let young women write their self insert fic about being Tony Stark’s sugar baby and then we wouldn’t have the wildly mischaracterised version of Peter Parker that we do! 

But, all this being said. I’m talking about fiction. Dean Winchester isn’t actually affected if people online only talk about him in a stereotypically “female” way. 

RPF is a different kettle of fish (and I’m not going in RPF ethics that’s different - I have no issues with rpf creators/consumers to be clear, I am one) because a real person does become affected. Even if you are keeping your fan works and discussions to private spaces, it can leach over into how you speak about the actual person. That’s where it becomes so incredibly important to remember that your RPF version of celebrities are just as fictional as Dean Winchester is. 

sorry I used mr. supernatural as an example, 13 year old me is still alive and kicking in my head somewhere. 

I love to hear your perspective on it with a trans worldview (and academic credentials), and I do agree that that might be a big driver of some young people only wanting to engage with MLM fic and feeling uncomfortable with WLW fic. You've brought up so many great points so I'll try and address them all.

I can add the perspective of a lesbian who was closeted for the first two decades of my life, came out less than five years ago, and still struggles on and off with comphet now. MLM fics in my teens were a way to consume queer content and relationships without having to think about the implications of enjoying consuming WLW content, and I think that's true for a lot of young closeted teens so it's no surprise that some comphet/hetnorm/cisnorm stuff bleeds through there because it's a framework the authors haven't managed to detach themselves from yet.

But yeah, I agree the issue lies with people wanting characters to be self-inserts partially so that they can experience sex, sexuality, and romance without any of the hang ups of thinking about patriarchy. And I agree with your solution: make y/n fics cool again! The ability we have to hallucinate while we read is magic! You can put YOURSELF in as a character's love interest, how cool is that?

Ultimately, yeah. There's nothing wrong with RPF as long as it isn't actually affecting the person that the RPF is based off, but I've seen a lot of takes escaping containment so to say (ie. leaving this website) with takes about the actual racers so obviously picked up through RPF. The main culprits are Charles, Lando, Max in my experience.

[astrowaffles]

Can I ask something from Fruits Basket? What do you think are Yuki and Kakeru’s greatest personality strengths and weaknesses? Why? In which moment that you start ship them? What do you love about their dynamic?

You have no idea, how happy I am to found someone who also ship yukeru. Now, I don't hate yuki/machi ship. But most of my fruba moots in a group only love this ship and consider yuki & kakeru just bromance and that kakeru can be a good brother in law for yuki...So when I told them that I ship yukeru, some of them think I'm weird, and some even block me. But I also found someone who told this group that they ship yuki with kyo. Then both of us were blocked by this group. They said that "Fruba is het romance/drama series and there are only m/f ships. Why have to see wholesome male-male and female-female friendship as something romantic." And me and that other moot (yuki/kyo shipper) became bestie.

Sorry for my rambling, love your blog....

hello anon! i took my time answering because i want this to be right, but in the end the best I can do is just give you my opinion on this T-T

Yuki's greatest strength in the beginning is his honesty with himself. he KNOWS what his shortcomings are, though he can't do anything about them. he has lots of strengths by the end!

Yuki's greatest weakness is his insecurity. it lead him to put up walls to prevent anyone getting close, and even tripped him when he was trying to make sincere connections because he believed people could never like him.

Kakeru's greatest strength is his love for people and emotional intelligence. he might be closed-off, confused, and alone, but he never stops putting himself out there for the people who have the courage to ask him for help. he knows exactly how to help everyone around him and only struggles when it comes to his own emotions and backstory. occasionally the way he expresses his care is a bit off though...

Kakeru's greatest weakness is his tendecy to live in his own head. if he had continued to make no attempt to connect to other people, he would have completely spiralled, and it was only thanks to other's care that he got out of his head and stopped living in his memories. his memories make him cold and angry, the opposite of what he wants to be.

As you can see, they are very similar people! I love them because Yuki finally begins to express his snarky, sarcastic side (gremlin boy, i love him) and Kakeru finally begins to express his gentler side, instead of being the harbinger of chaos all the time. I didn't ship them originally - Machi RIGHTS - but the more I thought about the "role of the love interest" in fruits basket, the more I realised Kakeru fit it perfectly for Yuki, and vice versa.

I think there is something beautiful in purely platonic bonds. In that sense, I wish I never found yukeru, because the idea that someone can grow and become their best self purely from the love of their best friend is such a wonderful idea. Also, the anime didn't show many wonderful machi moments (like when she gives yuki fertiliser) and kakeru's iconic girlfriend doesn't appear at all. I don't think I'll ever stop being a multishipper because I just can't decide which is better!

However, even if you view it as a bromance, that's not reason to block someone if you saw them as your friend. There's nothing inherently problematic with yukeru OR yukyo (kyuki?), even if you don't ship it yourself. I don't think I'd ship yuki & kyo in a million years, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Of course, it's also important to curate your internet experience: if you see a creator who talks a lot about a ship you hate, you are welcome to block them. It's better to block than start an argument! Still, it seems unnecessarily cold to block a friend over a ship disagreement.

Personally, I think you got away lightly - the people who insist that 'such-and-such is a het romance!!!' are usually just homophobic, to be honest. It's one thing to prize platonic relationships, it's another to use them as an excuse to be homophobic.

I'm glad you became besties!!

I actually have a fruits basket blog (@puttingthefruitinfruitsbasket) but i'm not very active because the fandom is so dead. still, you can take a look!

thanks for the ask!!

[rey-jake-therapist]

Encroaching on your asks with the most important questions of them all:

Why do you write OCs, and what is your process of creating/developing them like?

Any fandom, because it’s probably not fandom-specific.

Thank you for this ask! I love talking about my OCs ♥

Why do you write OCs?

There are two reasons.

The first is the most obvious reason: I want to write fan fiction with romance in it but none of the "official" ships works for me, so I create an OC to pair them with the character I like, most of the time the protagonist though I sometimes do it for secondary characters as well.

The other reason is that I love creating characters. I came to fanfiction very late in my life, for years I only wrote original stories, though I must say I rarely finished them, *facepalms*. I love writing fanfiction, but whenever I tried to work with an "official ship" I found myself frustrated because I didn't feel free to characterize them the way I wanted, since as you know, I respect the canon material I inspire myself from. For a year I threw a attempt at Reylo fanfiction but I quickly realised that like... 90% of the Reylo writers I think, I had to not only write AUs (NOT coffee shops AUs or other overused tropes like that) because canon sucks, but also completely change the personality of both characters for my romance to work. I ended up taking off all my Reylo fics from AO3 because if I want to play dolls, I'd rather play dolls with my own characters. Maybe one day I'll go back to these fics, change the names of the characters and publish them ;)

What is your process of creating/developing them like?

If I create them with the purpose of pairing them with a canon character, I think of a personality that could work with the character in question. Then I take much time thinking of a backstory, and of a reason why they come in the canon character's life. They have their own personality, struggles, desires and needs. They can't just pop up out of nowhere with no history of their own for the sole sake of making the canon character happy. Actually, most of the time they rather tend to complicate the character's life at first :p My favorite characters always being complex and broody characters with complicated lives, my reasoning will be like... "What can I do to mess them up even more and push them towards the edges of their sanity?" :D

All my main OCs are female characters. Again two reasons: I love writing women, much more than writing men, and I think there are already too many male characters who take the spotlight at the expense of female characters who are generally relegated to the background. So far the canon characters who inspired me to write them happened to be male so my romances are all m/f, but I don't desperate for the muse to inspire me a f/f romance involving a female blorbo ;) Of course I do it only if I think the canon character is straight or bi in the canon material: I still have in mind to respect the canon material so I'll never force a m/f relationship on a character who I see as gay in canon.

I can write male OCs but they will always be secondary characters; since my main OCs has a past and a life that doesn't involve the canon character, it would be way too weird for them not to have any friends or family. I don't spend as much as time on these OCs as I do on my main, but I still regularly remind myself that they need to be a bit fleshed out as well. Sometimes I also write secondary OCs to pair them with secondary canon characters; that's what I did recently I wrote a male OC to pair him with Mycroft, Sherlock's sibling.

I think it's also worth adding that like you, I'm one of this minority who doesn't say "fuck canon" when I create a story, but on the contrary I want it to be canon compliant. That's the real fun I find in writing fanfiction: find ways for my fic AND my OCs to work in the limits of the canon material. It means that if the main canon character dies in the canon material, he won't miraculously live in my fic lol If he ends up single at 60 in the canon books, obviously my romance will have a tragic or at best bittersweet ending. Happy endings aren't derogatory as far as I'm concerned ;)

One last thing: regarding their appearance, I tend to look for a real life model for my OCs. It helps me a lot to flesh them out in my mind.

[pianogav1n]

ooh thanks for the tag sam!! this is fun :D my answers under the cut also I truly don't know who I would tag for this so if you (the reader) want to answer these too go nuts :)

How did you get into reading/writing/drawing femslash? lesbianism fr though, as I've gotten older I've realized that even though I tend to enjoy female characters more, if I'm not intentional about it most of the fic I read ends up being centered around men because that's the content that people tend to create. it's important to me that I do better about consciously choosing to read about complex and nuanced female characters (this extends to books as well!!). In terms of femslash specifically, rather than just focusing on women: I'm honestly not that much of a shipper. I prefer to read and write things that are focused more on other plot than the romance itself, but it's still nice to see an aspect of myself reflected in the things I write. (that being said there are still plenty of ships that I enjoy reading and writing about!!) now that I've written all that I think I misunderstood the question. I got really invested in the ships listed in (2.) and I was like "I like these a normal amount" and sought out fic for them. I wasn't writing a lot in high school though unfortunately

What are your favorite femslash ships? korrasami, bubbline, and glinda/elphaba will always have my heart no matter what

Which F/F rarepair(s) do you wish got more love and why? patty/allison from kevin can fuck himself. I'm not sure it counts as a rarepair bc it's far and above the most popular ship from the show, but the show itself is relatively unknown. they begin as two women who at best dislike each other but they grow to care for the other enough to kill for her. the development is incredible. I love it. I also really like ran/sonoko and ran/sera (or all three of them!) from dcmk because they all have a well established and fleshed-out friendship and I think they should be more than that

What is your favorite thing about drawing/writing femslash? I loveeee exploring female characters and digging into their depths, or making them up if need be. and then with f/f you get at least two of them to think about :)

What is your greatest challenge when drawing/writing femslash? this issue extends beyond ship fic but I get embarrassed writing about characters expressing affection of any kind, verbal or physical. it feels really vulnerable and like I'll expose something about myself to the audience that I don't know I'm sharing (idk what!), which. yk. 🤷 unfortunately for me, unless one is writing a very specific dynamic, characters almost always will feel and express affection towards at least one other character in ship fic so it's a hurdle for sure.

Do you prefer reading/writing femslash one-shots or longfics? for reading, I like both! it mostly depends on what my attention span is in the moment. I would love to write a longfic one day but as of yet I've only written oneshots

What is your favorite/most underrated F/F fic you have written or F/F thing you've drawn? definitely not underrated because this is my most popular fic, but I had a lot of fun writing my falin/marcille hair braiding fic :) I don't think I got the characterization quite right but that's okay! room to grow still I think, honestly, I'm pretty pleased with the reception that my f/f works have gotten. not that I don't love attention but they seem to have reached the people who would enjoy them and that's plenty

What sort of background pairings do you like to see in fics with F/F as a main pairing? background pairings don't really matter to me that much. they're not something that pop out to me unless they're a ship I don't like lmao. but I like when the background characters are living happy wlw lives

What are your favorite tropes in F/F fics? I love when characters would do terrible things just to see the other one smile. good shit. devotion and all the awfulness that comes with it

What tone or vibes do you prefer in femslash fics? Crack? Angst? Fluff? A bit of everything? I never grew out of my teenage emo phase. I love angst and complicated emotions. but also happy endings for the characters

Are there any specific fics or other forms of media that inspired you to write/draw for a specific ship? none are coming to mind, but everything I've ever written is an attempt to capture the essence of the works I've read and enjoyed, so surely there's some ship inspiration in there too

Are there any specific F/F WIPs you are working on or ideas you’ve cooked up that you’re especially excited about? ideas and I are taking a break from each other right now unfortunately. hopefully it doesn't last long

Any fic recs? I haven't gone here in a long time but this chloe ml character study is truly excellent and I still think about it

femslash writer/artist interview

I’m trying to get back into interviewer mode for one of my jobs and classes, so I decided to make a (hopefully) fun little game. Feel free to reblog, tag ppl and answer as few or as many of the questions as u want. And feel free to tailor the questions to make them more applicable to u

How did you get into reading/writing/drawing femslash?

What are your favorite femslash ships?

Which F/F rarepair(s) do you wish got more love and why?

What is your favorite thing about drawing/writing femslash?

What is your greatest challenge when drawing/writing femslash?

Do you prefer reading/writing femslash one-shots or longfics?

What is your favorite/most underrated F/F fic you have written or F/F thing you've drawn?

What sort of background pairings do you like to see in fics with F/F as a main pairing?

What are your favorite tropes in F/F fics?

What tone or vibes do you prefer in femslash fics? Crack? Angst? Fluff? A bit of everything?

Are there any specific fics or other forms of media that inspired you to write/draw for a specific ship?

Are there any specific F/F WIPs you are working on or ideas you’ve cooked up that you’re especially excited about?

Any fic recs?

@pianogav1n @jajalala @vriska @linkyychan @thisisej

[rayshippouuchiha]

a pet peeve of mine is when people tag their fics with every single character/pairing that appears in the story, regardless of importance :/ e.g. they tag a character who appears briefly or has very little importance to the plot, tagged multiple relationships but only one of them is the focus and the others don’t appear at all

if some kind of idk… tagging etiquette?? were more widespread, I wouldn’t be clicking through 6 pages of fics where the f/f couple tagged is a briefly mentioned side pairing, or looking for fics that focus on a certain friendship or parental relationship and only finding endlessly tagged fic where it’s background-noise to a romance Q.Q

do you have any pet peeves wrt fic tagging?

I think that, in a lot of cases, beyond a mild misunderstanding as to how the tags are meant to be used, you see a lot of overtagging being done out of an abundance of caution.

Because I promise you there are people who have gotten nasty comments on their fics for not tagging a simple side pairing etc etc. So people overtag so no one can say they didn't warn them. And then it spreads outwards from there.

It can absolutely be annoying though, I'm not disagreeing with that.

Personally, my tagging has evolved from when I first started using AO3 and I really need to take the time to go back through some of my older stuff and fix the tags up.

I think the closest thing I can think of at the moment to an actual pet peeve with tagging is rating. As in people who tag a fic like E and come to find out they tagged it that way cause someone says the fuck word somewhere in the text.

Or fics that have like "if you ship xyz go away or I'll kill you" kind of tags. Those almost always immediately put me off a fic.

[amindofstone]

Match up, No. 9

@starlightbydaybright hat gefragt:

Hello! Saw you were taking match-ups and I was wondering if I could request one. Only done one before for another fandom, and I was wondering who I’d align with for One Piece ^^

I'm an INFP and generally an introvert, finding it difficult to express myself when I'm around people I'm unfamiliar with or just not close to. I can be both quiet and shy; quiet when I have no interest in making good impression on that person (a stranger I'll see once and never again) and shy when I'm genuinely trying to make myself acceptable to them. But, I do trust easily, so it's not hard to get close enough with me that I'll open up about almost everything, so long as they understand have my boundaries (that'll shift depending on how close). I'm also very affectionate with people I'm close with, particularly through physical touch, since I've been pretty touch starved. If you're close friends with me, you can find me constantly looking for a hug, but I can respect boundaries since not everyone enjoys contact.

The situation would be a bit different romance wise, since I’d revert a bit back to my introverted side, but also very affection-seeking at the same time. I say affection seeking as in I’d crave time and activities spent together with them, but I’d be afraid to ask/initiate, at least during the early beginnings of the relationship. I’d be constantly seeking affirmation of their love, and since I’ve never been in a relationship before (but desperately wanted one), they’d be constantly receiving my love too ❤️

While being an introvert in reality, I find it much easier to speak with confidence online. as I actually have time to contemplate what I can say. It's when I'm either with close friends or on the internet, that I can go on passionate endless rants or show my passive aggressive side. I'm usually pacifist, but if something irks me enough, I can and will pitch in snide/sarcastic remark or two, or if it's more serious; I will write out whole sophisticated and well worded paragraph that'd sound all polite with a hidden snarky tone.

I'm pretty much a hopeless romantic, so there's lot of couple things I want to try when I find someone. Back hugs, bridal carry, tickle fights, you name it. While I do enjoy these displays of affection (comes with the happy kind of embarrassment aka. I feel embarrassed that others sees it but I’m happy because I know they’re not doing it out of maliciousness and because they truly love me), small gestures are appreciated too; a gentle squeeze of the hand, a passing smile, etc.

As for hobbies, I enjoy reading, writing, (occasionally) drawing, but most of all; probably singing. I enjoy a wide variety of songs, depending on what mood I'm in, but I particularly like songs about love. Looking for someone to sing the duet love songs with me, doesn't matter how good or bad they are at singing. They can be tone deaf for all I care, it's the thought that matters 😊

I'm very emotionally sensitive, and can both laugh and cry easily. A random stranger online wished me good day? I'll be in good mood for awhile. Watched a 'mildly' sad movie? (Extra emphasis on mildly) I better have new box of tissue on the side just in case. It'd be nice to have someone that can either comfort me or at least tolerate my emotions, so I wouldn't be irking them 😞

I don't really have a type when looking for significant other but being an INFP does make the romance thing complicated. It'd be nice to have someone that's far along on the extroverted side (just not happy go lucky and can be serious) since, despite being introverted, I like to experience new things. I'm just too afraid to try alone and prefer it if someone else recommends it first. Someone to prompt me and nudge me to do something, but won’t take it too far if I really looked uncomfortable. (I’m also a procrastinator so they gotta find out the right ratio between pushing vs. taking it too far 😅) In relationship, I'd value trust and loyalty the most, since both are important in keeping the healthy relationship. If both sides could equally trust and be trusted, then there wouldn't be place for insecurity or fear. This ties in with another part of me being an INFP; I want a relationship that lasts forever. While it's weird to decide how long lasting the love will be early in the relationship, I don't think I can fully commit myself to someone, knowing that it'll end (through the other side falling out of love with me, finding interest in someone else, etc.) (natural causes like death are fine, even though I will still be sad 🥲)

As for appearance, I’m a 5”4 female with slightly wavy black hair that reach nearly to my waist. I don’t think I’m particularly short, but then again, every anime character seems to be straight up giants XD (Man, I was born with the wrong genes) I’m overall very plain, with black hair, brown eyes, but I’ve always been told I had pretty long eyelashes and big bright eyes. Average weight for my height, and flat chested :’)

As for the preference for gender, I’m mainly attracted to guys. I had some (very few) crushes on a small selection of female anime characters, but that were very rare, like 3, compared to my (insert large number) male crushes

Thank you in advance and sorry for how long this is 😔

P.s. I feel like I need to emphasize I’m still an introvert, since the personality I described is only limited to my very small friend group

a/n:

Hey there? How are you doing? Thank you so much for requesting. First off I should be apologizing for making you wait so long. I hope you´re not mad at me but lately there is a lot happening in my life. In my private life but also in my college life. But let´s put that aside and get to your request.

I have to thank you for the detailed info about you because that helped me to choose a match up for you so much. Like I instantly could think of someone. Not only did it help me to match you up with someone but also to come up with a plot. So I came up with this little imagine/hedcanon… I really don´t know what to call my work for the imaginies so I go with work. XD Anyways I really don´t know what to do at this point. Your request and your personality gave me such a good idea for a plot that I tried my best to keep it short because I decided to turn this request and my ideas and thoughts that are flying around in my mind to an actual FANFICTION! AHHHHHHHH. I can´t stop thinking about it. The idea sounds so damn good in my head that it makes me smile like an idiot right now! Uff I can´t wait to find time writing it down. AHAHH, but I fear that I already gave aways so much with this!!!! *pouts Doesn´t matter I´ll do it anyways. AHHHHHHHHHHH Thank you so damn much for requesting!

Anyways! Back to my work now. If there is anything that bothers you or you simply hate please make sure to tell me so I can change it and give you whatever you´d like. Other than that happy reading my dear!

Match up rules can be found HERE.

Warning(s): Maybe grammatical or spelling mistakes since English is my third language and I´m still improving in every aspect (Please have mercy on that.)

!!! Please do not steal my idea or work. Credit me if this is shared or published in any other platform or any other way. Please respect me as the writer and my work. Picture is not mine. Credits to: I sadly don't know. Please tell me of you know so I can give credits. Thank you in advance. !!!

· I decided to pair you up with KILLER

· Like am I the only person that thinks that he is not getting the screen time and appreciation he deserves? Because that is the damn case! ODA GIVE THIS MAN THE LOVE AND APPRECIATION HE DESERVES. And while we´re at it I wouldn´t mind if I would get a bit more of Eustass Kid too… Thank you in advance. <3

· But that’s not the point. Please dear requesting beautiful human being give this man and me, your hopelessly dreamy author a chance. Thank you, I really appreciate. <3

· aNyWaYssssS.

+

· “y/n? Are you still awake?”, asked the blond man softly. “No worries I won´t make you carry me to bed again.”, you said with a giggle. You couldn´t see his face but you knew that he was smiling. “I don´t mind that you know? I like having you close to me without having to fear to see you hid under the blanket for who knows how long.”, you rolled you eyes and hit his arms. “That only happened because that idiot captain of yours annoyed the hell out of me. That was embarrassing Killer.”, you slowly put one leg over the railing and then the next one. Making sure you don´t fall down the ship. “What happened? Didn´t you drag me out our cabin to watch the stars?”, asked the muscular man who held you close to him while making sure you didn´t fell. “I did but now I´d like to look at something different. Something even more beautiful. Something that gives me warmth and happiness. Something that keeps me alive and always makes sure I am doing fine.”, talking to the blond pirate while sitting at the railing was one of the rare moments you were close to an eye level with him. “You mean my mask?”, asked the man with a tiled head that got you to roll your eyes and hit his chest. “Great you destroyed the sweet moment. I hate you. Make a step back so I can get down. I want to go back to bed and drown in regret of dating you.”, you tried to push him away but he was obviously stronger and threw you over his shoulder. “Of course you hate me. That was also the exact same thing you were moaning a while ago. Let´s go back to bed nerd.”

· As sweet and loving your relationship was now with the pirate it also started like that. Wanna know how? Alright let me get comfortable in my bed and get started. Story TIIMMMEEEE!!!

· An island well known for their universities and scientist. An island full of top ranked doctors.

· Physics, chemistry, biology, astrology was well thaught in the schools of the island. An island well known around the world. An island ruled by a powerful devil fruit user.

· An island in which every civilian had a talent in another field. And you? You sadly had an impressive talent for languages.

· Why sadly you wonder? Well the amount of times you had to run for your dear life because some pirates could come and kidnap you and make you read the poneglyphs is immense.

· Once even the infamous Red haired Shanks came and asked you with the hope to have someone who could read them. But sadly you couldn´t. You told him that you were done with pirates coming for you or your best friends. You regretted learning all of that and hated yourself for that. Shanks and Beckman to whom your were talking to really felt bad for you and claimed the island as their territory after they had a chat with ruler and made a deal.

· That was that saved you and your friends for years and made you happy. You were thankful to the red hair pirates and always treated them with meals and drinks when they came visiting the island. You were happy for 5 years. 5 years until these stupid reckless pirates came.

· And now? Now you hated yourself all over again

· You knew that not every pirate was like the red hair pirates. Nice and respectful. They didn´t kill innocent people and destroyed civilizations only to get some gold and diamonds. But these? These were horrible. Cold and cruel.

· “Someone make this btch talk otherwise I´ll do it by cutting her into pieces only stropping when IT actually starts to answer my god damn questions!”, screamed a tall and guy with red hair.

· You were scared. Tied on a mast on their ship, you feared for your life. Screaming for help was not an option since you were already on the sea since a while now.

· The man that was yelling at you none stop was now holding a blond man with a mask at his collar and growling at him. The man might have a mask on but you somehow had the feeling that he was talking to the man with the red fur coat. “Clear the deck! NOW!!”; yelled the man before he left inside the ship. Slowly every man on deck was leaving you alone. You wanted to ask them were or why the left but you knew that they wouldn´t give you an answer. You were a prisoner. A captive. A pathetic human they took on board. With the last pirate leaving you behind, a door that was located behind the mast you were tied on closed while the need to cry grew inside of you. How long am I here by now? One hour? Two or three? Was anyone missing me back at home? Were they already looking for me? Thoughts that occupied your mind were blurring your vision. You were looking right in front of you but also not. Your eyes were wide open but your vision was back at home. Home were you belonged.

· “Hey. Hey can you hear me? Hey you alright, woman? Hello?”, a man was squatting in front of you and waving with his hands in front of your face. You were deeply lost in your thoughts that you neither heard him coming nor saw him sitting right in front of you.

· But the moment he touched you tight you screamed and got back to reality. “Please don´t touch me. Please don´t hurt me. Please I beg you. Please.”, fear was written all over your face. You saw yourself death with a huge puddle of your blood. “Alright I won´t touch you. It´s just that I´ve been sitting in front of you for 5 minutes now and the only thing you did was breath and say no. Anyways here is something to drink. You´ve been her for four hours now. Half of the time unconscious and the other one either basically mute or in a trance.”, the guy in front of you was the same one who got the mad man to leave and clear the deck. It made you wonder who he was that he had such a power but you didn´t dare to ask. “Here I hold it for you and you drink.”, the glass was put on your lips and you drank. You didn´t knew how thirsty you were until your lungs were wetted by the water. Finished drinking he put a blanket over your legs since the position your were in didn´t allow you to cover yourself properly. And the fact that you were wearing a dress wasn´t helping at all.

· “Alright. You had something to drink I got you a blanket now tell me are you able to talk to me and answer my questions?”, you nodded. “Good. Now listen to me. There is this language that is called Krisanasy. As far as I know there is a tiny amount of people who are able to speak that and you are one of these. Am I right?”, you nodded. “How well are you in it?”, you gulped and looked at the man with the mask “I know the most important basics. I remember basic grammar rules and a good amount of vocabulary but I´m not that good in it. I didn´t worked with anything that included this language since years now.”, the masked man nodded and fully sat down now. “Would you be able to get back in it if you had some books and scripts to work with?”, slowly you understood where this was supposed to lead. You knew that if you said yes they would keep you as their prisoner and make your work for them. And if they had everything they would kill you because there would be no more use for you. But if you said no now and refused to talk to him he would probably also kill you. You were in a dilemma. You didn´t wanted to die but also didn´t wanted to die after you helped them. They were criminals. Feared and hated by the government and any human around the world. You looked down on your lap and let your head fall forward so your long black hair covered your face. “Hey I asked you something. Would you be able to do that?”, his voice was deep and rough but in the same time soft and gentle. That irritated you. it make you realize that him being nice to you now was just a way to get under your skin and make you do whatever they wanted. And then they simply would kill you in the most brutal and cruel way. “Hey, woman. Are you listening?”, you felt helpless. “I don´t want to die. Please let me go. Please. I beg you. Please.”, tears were streaming down you cheeks you couldn´t hold back anymore. He came closer and lifted you face. “Listen here you are a smart woman. Stop crying for fcks sake. If I would be you I would have made these pirates work for me. Use your damn brain and stop crying. Do you really think anyone in here would kill you? Heck no! They need your help. They need your brain because all of them are basically stupid. Like damn I need you to answer all of my questions before my captain with anger issues comes and beats the sht out of me. Now answer me woman. Are you able to get back in it if we got you some scripts to work on?”, you nodded while more tears streamed down you cheeks. You felt pathetic. You felt worthless and used. Helping them would turn you into a criminal too and ruin everything you worked on. Everything the emperor did for you and the island would be wasted. “See wasn’t that hard to answer.”

· The questioning went on for a while you didn´t know for how long but you knew that a long time passed since the sun stared to set. “Alright. Now I give you two options. One, stay here. Tied up on the mast no matter what kind of weather we face. Two you swear to obey me no matter what kind of order I give you and you will be able to sleep on a bed. You will get food and tomorrow you will start working on the scripts we give you. You choose.”, with your head hung lowly you said number two and instantly got released from the chains and handcuffs. He helped you stand up and covered you in the blanket before he led you into his cabin. “Wait here. Sit there and don´t do anything stupid as long as I´m not here. If you do anything stupid I won´t be able to help you. Got it?”, he didn´t even wait until you answered or gave any reaction he simply left and closed the door after him. So you waited while sitting with a lowly hung head. Minutes passed and he came back. “Your clothes are dirty. The bathroom is empty so you can take a bath or shower. Anything you want but I´ll be in the room with you. Because of one I have to make sure no one is coming in and secondly to watch over you and make sure you don´t do anything stupid. Got it. Fine. Take this towel and these clothes. We don´t have any female crewmates so you have to be wearing with my clothes until we dock on another island and you get to buy clothes.”

· The man with the mask took care of you for the rest of the day. He took you to shower and gave you fresh clothes. You had dinner with him alone in the kitchen when no one was around and got back to sleep. And no matter what you did he made sure to keep a respectful distance towards you. Whenever he had to come closer or touch you to take care of your wounds he would warn you. The day kept going like that. Nothing else was said about the following days and the thing they wanted you for. Only necessary things were said that were needed at the moment. And you only gave short replays or only answered with a head movement.

· Slowly the day passed by and the night took over with the moon putting the world alight. You were back in his cabin with him sitting on an armchair and you lying in bed sleeping with one hand tied up on the bed.

[zuzuslastbraincell]

Send me a ship and I'll give you my (brutally) honest opinion on it: ZUKKA

OH i have some opinions on this. warning: this reply will be a mile long.

essentially: i do really like zukka and have a soft spot for it, i used to absolutely love it (it was my fave ship back when i first watched atla in 2016), but the revival of atla has complicated my feelings towards it & has made me realise how much fan discussion and culture shapes out understanding of television. I largely think it is very overrated now and the fandom frustrates me a lot even if it's still kind of dear to me?

like at core, i think one should approach zukka not like it was 'meant to be' or highly signalled by the narrative (it was not and never was, lol, let's be honest) but rather just an extrapolation & continuation of the great teamwork dynamic and friendship that zuko and sokka presented during the boiling rock episode. they set out with some of the most awkward small talk and struggled to communicate or bond (i.e. that's rough buddy) but in the midst of the action, affirmed, supported, and trusted each other repeatedly, and this culminated in how well they fought together against azula imo? by the time they left they were so much closer. tbh i think zuko is important to sokka, as zuko affirms sokka and doesn't see him like dead weight or unnecessary in the slightest and believes in him, but also zuko is emotionally forthright in a way that challenges sokka, who hides his insecurities and buries emotions deep with a bleak outlook, sarcastic humour and a focus on the plan, to be more forthright as well. i think sokka helps direct zuko from bad impulsive decisions without trying to stifle him either and clearly appreciates some of his more hare-brained creative solutions (e.g. breath of fire in the cooler) and doesn't dismiss him entirely as an idiot either. like their dynamic - friendship or romance - is very good imo from only that one episode

ideal zukka content is set in this liminal space between boiling rock and sozin's comet where it's about the two of them continuing to lean on and trust each other, open up about shared fears and experiences (both older brothers with chips on their shoulders and prodigy sisters who looked up to their very very different fathers) but also just be goofy boys together, who do stupid or impulsive things and just *act their age* as that is something neither sokka nor zuko, who both shoulder responsibilities and tasks beyond their years, get to do much. like something light, maybe a little fleeting, but means so much in that space, very much the sort of meaningful summer romance you might have as a teenager.

all that said:

for various reasons i'm now sure how it'd pan out long term? a lot of fandom content depicts them as meant-to-be and each other's whole world when like, there's clearly so many other priorities they have - both have a strong sense of duty by the end of the show and i really dislike it when sokka is depicted neglecting that to spend all his time hanging around zuko? like racism r.e. sokka also comes into play as people will devalue his friendships and family in the tribe for the sake of a romantic relationship (with the fire lord, of all people! the boy-king of the imperialist nation that once raided the water tribe so much that it was barely hanging by a thread!). like i don't mind reading fic that actually takes the time to explore that conflict of interest and those different goals and how to navigate having different priorities as an adult and the legacy of colonialism without totally handwaving it or dismissing it but a lot of content just ignores it for the sake of 'oh gay husbands' and it really does a disservice to the characters? realistically i think it would have to be long distance and even then i'm not sure if that's what either needs - and so I instinctively just don’t care for anything that ignores the real difficulties they’d face.

there's also issues with racism in how sokka is mischaracterised as stupid (he's not) or the more emotional one (really, did we watch the same show) or how he thinks zuko is just a million times out of his league (especially when this trope talks about zuko's silky hair or pale skin i absolutely want to scream), as well as fetishising art where he's often more nude that really can make some zukka circles really really uncomfortable? like imo some fans definitely treat zukka like the red boy/blue boy ship from v*ltron and either grossly simplify or flat out ignore characterisation for them to fit certain stock m/m fandom archetypes, and a lot of this is tied up with racist fetishisation of visibly brown characters and fandom racism too. and yeah there's some visual similarity there but zuko and sokka are a thousand times more fleshed out? please don't reduce them to that bullshit. very much feels like the rise of zukka is a product of how fandom culture nowadays prioritises m/m far more than it did 10 years ago but has not at all attempted to address racism, misogyny, ableism, any kind of structural power dynamics that shape modern american/western culture and fan discussions

also? quite honestly i'm of the opinion that people should *not* be writing explicit sexual content about aged-up teenagers in community spaces where there's *tonnes* of minors and yet there is a plethora of explicit zukka fic in this revival and it leads to people just casually remarking about sexual roles of teenage characters around fucking. 15 year old kids. and the total lack of responsibility or even willingness to question whether this is appropriate by adults in this community drives me up the fucking wall. (zukka isn’t unique in this regard btw other ships do this too but it's been a reason for my growing discomfort). obvs teenagers do talk about sex themselves but they should do that amongst themselves and not with adult strangers in the figurative room? ffs.

i think on a more minor note now there's almost an over-saturation of content in the atla fandom to the extent that its drowning out other, more meaningful discussions about the characters or their equally/more important platonic dynamics, and that's frustrating to engage with.

like in theory, done well, with a delicate hand that respects the strength of their characters and dynamic, it's an A+ ship, but the content the fandom produces is sometimes really horrible. In fairness to zukka fans there have been attempts at accountability in at leas the circles i travel in, but there's way more to do in this regard.

(and also as a primarily f/f writer i do resent it a teeny tiny bit because of how much reception it receives for a pairing with little textual basis, and how that dwarfs femslash at the end of the day since a lot of the focus on m/m is fetishising or the readers just don't consider the autonomy or interiority of women as interesting).

anyway.

i feel like i have more to say but that is largely it r.e. zukka. very much taught me a ship is often as good as its fandom, but also taught me that i can read two works labelled zukka and they can have absolutely nothing in common beyond that because how good a ship in fic is reliant on what the author has done with it. i’ve read a lot zukka content i adore but i’ve also read a fair amount of zukka content that makes me deeply uneasy/uncomfortable. I still love it but i have a love-hate relationship with it to some extent.

[onewomancitadel]

I wanted to write this post without getting into RWBY, but I'll get into RWBY quickly because I think it has an example of where the love triangle is very very stupid but could potentially be redeemed and where the love triangle is stupid but was partly stupid because it had a clear 'winner' (especially in retrospect).

Very very stupid love triangle that could potentially be redeemed is obviously Jaune/Weiss/Pyrrha. What a waste time! The only reason I don't like rewatching the first three volumes is because of that one storyline; I loathe love triangles, I hate Pyrrha pining for Jaune whilst Jaune is all over Weiss, it makes me sad and makes me not want to ship any of them because they're all bad, it's clearly there to insert more pain into Pyrrha's Struggle and represent her inability to never have that life. I get it! It makes sense in retrospect! But watching it as RWBY aired (EYEROLL) was bad, and for a show that has to cut the fat it was a complete waste of time. I get that it signals romance isn't important for Weiss' character compared to the weight it has in the rest of the story - I can see what it was trying to do - but part of what frustrates me is that there's so much more going on for Pyrrha that isn't a fucking love triangle.

It can be redeemed so long as Jaune doesn't end up with Weiss, because then it was all for nothing; I can handle it if it really all were not about 'the love triangle' but about Pyrrha. That makes more sense to me, especially because it's using the love triangle trope as the vehicle for something greater... I criticised that in this post for a reason because I still don't LIKE it, but letting Weiss 'win' because she was the one who survived is gameifying it.

... Yes I know I ship Jaune with Cinder, it's because it's totally disparate from the love triangle and is the answer to the Wound of Love and greater narrative stakes with no fucking embarrassing ambiguity from a love triangle, it's because they're ENEMIES. I'm not writing a treatise here on Knightfall, but at least the connection to Pyrrha is not 'I could have loved her/I love you more' re: Weiss and the relationship stands on its own in terms of narrative development.

Now the love triangle that is stupid but more importantly partly stupid because it had a clear 'winner' is Blake/Yang/Sun, because I feel that Yang was (if the romance is tied to the narrative in the story) very clearly the motivated romance. Blake/Sun had some tropes in its favour (e.g. mysterious meet cute, anime ball date, bridal carry) but actually reading it in the context of the story it didn't make much sense and couldn't carry itself. It was tiresome and it would've been more interesting if that element had been suppressed altogether (which they committed to in V6, in my opinion). What made Blake/Yang the 'dark horse' was that it's an F/F relationship which is automatically less likely, even if you are in favour of it, and I'm not about to sit here arguing that's why it should be canon for the sake of representation (which can feel condescending to narrative and to those whom ought to feel represented by it) but because to be quite honest it was the most justified and clearly set up. It doesn't mean you have to like it (for some reason I have been accosted by anti-Blake/Yang fans; I have no horse in this race, leave me alone) and it doesn't mean you can't criticise its execution, but overall I feel that Blake/Sun was left weaker by virtue of the fact it was never going to be canon.

Add Blake/Adam in and Blake/Ilia (Ilia's unrequited feelings) and I have the sense it's some play on a reverse harem anime trope, so I can kind of see what they're doing there, but also reverse harem/harem is really not 'true' romance in the sense I enjoy it... was it worth doing? Ilia's love for Blake is redeeming and Adam's obsession with Blake both represents elements of Ozlem in the story and generally the sense of romantic love explored in the story, so it's doing SOMETHING, and is generally Less Bad than Blake/Sun being teased, so to mitigate it I suppose the option would never have been to use anime romantic tropes with them (though to be fair - the bridal carry is not necessarily romantic in RWBY. I know, it makes me cry).

I can see what they were/are doing with the love triangles; I don't have to like them. Just because something is thematically justified or you have a genuine idea to explore it doesn't make it automatically good - despite what I often spout on here - because you still need to consider narrative space and whether that's the most interesting way you could do it. Obviously there's a consideration of the fact there's an anime influence here on RWBY, where you have things like the very obvious Jaune/Pyrrha romance in the romantic tradition (Character B trains up Character A and quietly pines for them etc.) is actually obfuscated and then turned into something tragic and painful and representative of what Pyrrha can't have, so I get the lip service - and the respect - for their influences - but it's dumb and I don't like it. There were and are better ways to do it.

Do I feel that RWBY is 'mean', as I used above? Because it twists both love triangles? I don't think I'd call it 'mean' per se, because in this case I do think all of it is narratively justified, from a certain point of analysis. But the focus on a love triangle is always going to be the absolute narrative ends: who ends up with whom and how you can appropriately predict that, as opposed to any other thematic considerations (see: the Gale problem above), hence my profound dislike.

Love triangles

I loathe love triangles with all of my being. They are singularly one of my most hated tropes in romance and spoil the well for me almost every single time - which is a dead shame because it is unfortunately a rather common conceit.

What I realised when I was thinking about it yesterday - and this is an interesting point from a structural perspective - is that in order to develop the relationships (even if you are guaranteed to only be committing to one), you are effectively halving the development of each relationship in respect to the other in terms of narrative space.

That makes for a very difficult task and I feel like almost no one writing a love triangle (sincerely, with feelings for both sides or at least equal consideration given to each, because there IS one caveat where I'm down for a love triangle) realises that this is something you need to be really careful about and, other than my true love soulmates forever inner crybaby demon complaining about competing love interests, is probably the reason it so often ends up falling flat.

Of course it depends on what your expectations are for romance. If, 'Character A has feelings for Character B' constitutes appropriate and believable development then of course a love triangle is not asking you to suspend your disbelief. For me, I do not Fucking Buy It, and when it comes to romance I want to see genuine development of the romance and feelings involved, which means at least one of the relationships is going to be more poorly developed... so why do it?

Love triangles inject ambiguity into a story, which is why they're a common trope and easy shortcut to tension; they divide fanbases into shipping wars which is, from a rather cynical perspective, an easy way to cultivate fan engagement and name for your brand (Team Edward/Team Jacob might be one of the most culturally relevant products of Twilight, despite the fact the presence of the love triangle doesn't make any sense at all and was clearly a cheese on the author's or publisher's part to pad out the series).

If you are doing love triangles for other reasons (e.g. thematic ones: a common YA trope is that the love triangle represents the protagonist's choice between two ideas she must reconcile with, e.g. peace and war (Peeta or Gale)), it is obviously a little more justified but I think that if you want to thematically augment and imbue one of the romances to convey what you mean to convey, it means one of the romances will suffer or be obviously completely out of the competition and inappropriate. So even if it's ostensibly thematically justified, it doesn't make it interesting. Further, I think there's an issue here in that if, say, fans generally expect childhood friends-to-lovers, they're not exactly going to get the thematic message that a character like Gale should be sending, and would be upset about the culmination of his character as a way to forcibly 'end' the romance; obviously controlling fan reaction is not something you should ever try to do, but I don't think the love triangle manages to convey the themes more effectively than not. That's the crucial point.

So if love triangles firstly reduce total romance development (think about the usual space afforded to a traditional romance to make it believable and moving!), and secondly are not necessarily superior vehicles for conveying thematic ideas, then I think the reason they are enduring tropes is because of that artificial ambiguity. We KNOW the character stuck in the middle will end up with one or the other or alone (or all three at different parts of the story), which means it can feel wishy-washy if they work at it back and forth, or ultimately the ambiguity is not worth very much, or the story can feel unfair because sometimes storytellers will value the 'less likely' option e.g. the more poorly developed one, just for the sake of shock value. That is partly why I hate love triangles, because they can feel like a joke on the audience.

I hesitate to say this so declaratively but I feel like love triangles are often a product of lazy storytelling. Not just lazy storytelling but paint-by-numbers romance which doesn't care about romance CONCEPTUALLY. Not just romance as a means to an end but romance as a fully lived-in visceral experience of the characters that isn't just 'who will end up with whom'. I'm not about to criticise it from an unrealistic perspective (who even ends up in that many love triangles!?!!?) but from a perspective of emotional verisimilitude, I find it hard to believe in a story where love is centred and valued that it could be reduced to something that feels oddly transactional or even gameified - Character C cultivated enough Romance Points with Character A so he wins. It just has a tacky feeling in the mouth.

I still feel critically that the sacrifice of romantic development for the sake of two potential romances is the critical flaw, and that's the most interesting takeaway; it doesn't mean they can't be done but it's something to be cognisant of (and I've never seen this criticism before but forgive me if someone's already said it, it felt novel to me lol). It's not just concrete development that has to be split but emotional narrative space (what the character is thinking and doing) and thematic narrative space (which with some examples can be mitigated but nevertheless in this case, one romance will automatically be 'stronger' than the other), which can get messy and exhausting really quickly.

I'm sure there are ways it can be done properly - I think this is true of anything in storytelling, it's almost universally fixable (the one caveat where I tolerate it, if not love it, is when it's only a misunderstood love triangle, and there really is no such one) - but very particular to love triangles, they represent boring and overdone trends in romantic storytelling that thinks competition is more important than actual development and treats them as almost requisite, and love triangles are not a small enough trope to be potentially overlooked because they are a major structural consideration in the story but are treated too casually.

I want to see the full development of a romance, not half.

[kate837]

The Rut called Romance

Roman and Rich hanging out together for Valentine's Day. Totally avoiding all kinds of canon because why not? Also the ships here are RomanxBlake and RichxPatterson. If you don't like the pairings, I'm sorry but I do so..... Here we go.

@holidayblindspot

"Happy singles awareness day! " Rich had been complaining non-stop about the upcoming holiday for the past week. "You know Roman, for us to be two da*n good looking guys we somehow are the only ones who are single. I mean how is that even possible? "

"Out of everyone I figured you would be the one who would be least concerned over being single. I don't know, I just kind of got the feeling that you were the type to feel as though a relationship, open or not, would tie you down. " Roman had only known Rich for a couple months but they had become pretty close, which is why they decided to wallow together on this unforgivingly unsweet holiday.

"Look I'm gonna tell you something that no one knows so don't tell anyone. " Rich leaned in. "I'm a HUGE romantic. I don't know why but I am, I mean I've basically watched like every single romantic comedy there is. So whenever I have a "crush" I immediately start to imagine rom-com type scenarios with them to decide if I really like them or not. "

"That's surprisingly cute actually. Wait who's your crush? "

"It's not important, she doesn't like me anyways. "

" Same. Who needs women? "

"I'll drink to that! "

They sat and drank for a total of thirty minutes before the shenanigans started.

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"YoU KnOW WHaT? " A little more than a little tipsy Roman was a lot more outspoken then normal Roman. Rich silently noted that Roman has a sort of Aussie accent when he's tipsy.

"What? "

"We need to throw caution to the wind, man the f*ck up and motherf*cking call our women and declare they're ours! "

"You know what? You're right! LET'S DO THIS! "

"WHOO! Now you go first"

"Wait what? No fairrrrrrrr. "

Rich pulled out his phone and dialed Patterson's number, Roman was slightly confused when Rich was calling a woman named Peppermint Patty but he figured he would let him live his life how he wanted.

"Hello?"

"I may be the dumbest genius or smartest idiot you know, also a little tipsy, but I know one thing. I want you, and I know that you have had bad relationships in the past but I swear I'm not a mole or dead! And I just really really really really really really really really like you, so I'm taking you out. "

"Ok."

"Wait seriously? "

"Rich I'm an FBI agent, do you really think I wouldn't be able to pick up on your behavior towards me? Now I'm going to be honest I have never thought of you as a romantic partner but I'm willing to go out with you to see where this could go. Also I consider you more of a smartest idiot than dumbest genius by the way."

Rich could hear the smile in her voice within the last sentences and he smiled himself. Both of them giggling from excitement; Rich hung up. It was officially Roman's turn!

"Aw sh*t why did I sign up for this? Dang it. Oh crap I'm scared. Ok I'm dialing. Sh*t! "

His flustered nature was the most adorable thing Rich had ever seen.

"Hello? "

He was doing it, he was calling Blake Crawford.

"I really like you a lot. And I jus- oh sorry hello. " Roman was overtly flustered for a man, especially that man being himself.

"So look I really like you and I want to spend Valentine's with you and the day after with you and the day after until the end of time, because I just really freaking like you. And I'm not taking no for an answer." Roman mirrored an earlier conversation with Blake in the last sentence just to show her that he listens.

"Well this is good news because I really like you too! Umm... Can you pick me up at seven? "

"Yes I definitely can. " Roman, thinking he put his phone on mute engages Rich in a high five, multiple (uncomfortable) chest bumps, and non stop whooping. Blake hears it all and starts to giggle, then hangs up, she would be sure to tease him about it later. And tease him for some other reasons too.

"Well Roro Rolo we did it."

"Not too bad for a couple of 'da*n good looking guys' huh? "

"I guess not. " They smiled at each other.

"Also never call me Roro Rolo again. "

"Oh come on it's cute! "