#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!!

[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.

[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.

[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.

#: #: #: #: #: #: #: #: #: #: #: #:: #: #: #: #: #:

"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! "

[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.