#and its fine. its completely fine. romance isnt a requirement. not in real life not in fiction. let people live

[dyketubbo]

i hate when allos in fandom or even romo favorable aros in fandom act as if being romance repulsed is this fucking boogeyman 😭😭 its not that deep you fucking assholes we're just repulsed. we just dont want to see it. no its not just about the shipping culture fiction doesnt automatically become exempt to repulsion for everyone. disliking something doesnt automatically mean seeing it as morally reprehensible. say you dont actually gaf about aros without saying you dont actually gaf because goddamn.

yes i would like to opt out of shipping in 90% of cases. because its not for me. the same way theres some people who never want to engage with horror or with stories that, idk, has bugs in it. i dont look down upon people who like romance in stories but in most cases its just a fucking slog and i dont like how most people do it. it doesnt make me fucking big foot. youre an ass. youre just being an asshole

[missjackil]

My 15x06 Opinion

Golden Time

This was a really good episode despite my disapproval of the end. I can be objective :) 

We have a very fun start with Dean moping adorably around in his hotdog PJs binging on cereal and Scooby-doo.  And be still my beating heart, Sam going for a run! There’s nothing unsexy about sweaty, messy-haired, athletic Sam in sweats!! But oh wait... ghost Eileen appears.  She’s stuck as a ghost, having escaped Hell when the gates opened. Strangely enough, the Winchesters are stuck on the word of a demon that people cant enter Heaven if they have ever been to Hell. I gotta say, I'm kinda disappointed that the boys just take his word for it, is that just me?

Meanwhile, we have Cass on his own. On a mission to find a missing kid. I have to give it to Cass, he was pretty interesting this week, and I loved his look of complete done-ness when Dean was barking at him on the phone. I also gotta love Dean for his “Don’t you dare ignore my brother” attitude! 

In other news, another local witch tried to get into Rowena’s stash and got dead in the process. Sam is going to Rowena’s apartment to find a spell and a crystal to put Eileen in to keep her fro going back to Hell or going insane as a ghost. When he gets there, he finds the body, the apt in disarray and nothing of good witchy value in the immediate area. Eileen finds a secret room where all Rowena’s goodies are and Sam goes in. This was a nice moment Sam had of remembering her.  Might I say, he took her death much harder than he’s taken others deaths aside from Dad’s and Dean’s many. I dont even think he looked this shaken by his Mom’s death, but much has to do with him killing her Im sure. 

Upon leaving, Sa buckles in pain, spitting blood, of course he has been hexed. Now I think it’s so cute that even though he knows very little sign language, he knows how to sign “My brother” to tell Eileen to go get him.  Sam, of course, is thusly abducted.

After Sam’s obligatory “tied up and mildly tortured” scene, he takes a young witch with him to get a resurrection spell from Row’s apt. The witch states her now-dead sister made her life hell. Sam trie to relate by saying Dean put Super Glue in his toothpaste when he was 10, which was instantly trumped by real horrors the young witch endured. Thats right Sam, Dean isnt such a bad brother...but you know that ;)

Sam tries to convince the girl to run start a new life, be happy, and she accuses him of lying and a big fight scene starts.  Dean arrives in time to save Sam, Eileen saves Dean, then Sam saves Eileen. TADAAAH!!

Now we have the scene that screams “Sam and Eileen are gonna bang!” to me. They couldnt leave Eileen as their host friend that is the inspiration they need to try to fix Heaven or make a new one or whatever, no, lets bring her back to life because I guess we need to get Sam laid before whatever fate befalls him at the end of the series, go out with a BANG as they say 😣

We have a spell to bring Eileen back, because obviously, bringing people back to life has always worked out so well for the Winchesters, they should definitely do it again!!! And this spell requires Sam to draw a nice deep soaking bath, in a modern tub that the boys must have installed themselves because it doesnt fit the MOL time period motif they've always had,  sprinkle in some herbs (probably rose petals too why tf not)  speak some extra sexy Latin, and have Sam modestly turn around because he’s a gentleman, and found the only resurrection spell to date that brings ‘em back naked. Candlelight, soft music, Sam’s ample bosom heaving breathlessly in anticipation for the spell to work. Of course it does, theres a twinkle in Sam’s eyes as he hears the water splash... “Sam?”  He hears and takes as the OK to turn around. It worked!! His 4 yr crush-when-convenient is back to life because again, this has always worked out so good. 

She holds out her hand for Sam to take it... this is so y’all know she initiated the sex they have/had later that we’ll either get to see the cuddle in bed, or get a verbal acknowledgment of. I may literally puke if we actually get a sex scene.  Sorry, it was fine back when the bros barely liked each other, but theyve been more or less married for years now and it just seems wrong. Oh dont worry, if Sam gets laid, Dean will too. Though Sam did put Eileen to bed without sex because she needs sleep, we need to know this because it wont seem as creepy if we know he at least let some time pass and didnt take advantage of possible vulnerability. 

I hope I can come back next episode or so and be very glad I was wrong, because I know a lot of you dont think they’ll bang, but I say theres no reason whatsoever for a scene like that other than to prep us for romance and not leave any of you saying “Wait! Where did that come from?? They only think of each other as friends!” 

I hope its short lived, not that I want Eileen to die... again... but lets just have her go off hunting on her own because if she is Sam’s end game (which I dont think she is) I will unwatch the entire series and never let it on my screen again 😑

Honorable mention to Cass, congrats on solving your first case by yourself and I actually really dug you losing your shit on the Djinn!! 

So aside from my personal disapproval, on a scale of Bloodlines to Lebanon Ill say this was another very good one. Ill give it a 7, deducting a full point for giving me agita. 

[askderynsharp]

Prince Aleksander Ferdinand of Hohenberg and Midshipman Dylan Sharp have been my ultimate otp to end all otps since I first read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld in the eighth grade. 

This could be because they exist in one of the coolest examples of biopunk meets steampunk I’ve ever experienced. 

It could be because the one of the pair is a subtextual transman so instrumental to my own gender expression that I named myself after him. 

But I think that out of everything, its because the romantic aspect manages to be the center of attention without subtracting quality from the plot. 

The reason that I’m so invested in these two more then anything else in the series is because the book isnt about anything else. Scott Westerfeld seems pretty open about the fact that Leviathan is supposed to be a young adult romance with the backdrop of characterature of the great war. But unlike so many romantic stories, especially those geared towards young adults, Scott uses the dual narrative to expand on both of the lead’s experience. The story could have very easily been Alek’s alone, while a major player in the world Dylan’s point of view wasn’t completely necessary if the intention was ever going to be Alek getting his throne in the end. 

The same goes the other way, if it were just a story of a transman’s developing gender identity, we wouldn’t have any reason to hear from Alek. Both Alek and Dylan could easily have been shoved into a ‘supporting character’ role, but they weren’t.

Simply put, Dylan and Alek are in a love story where neither of them are love interests. They’re both player characters, people we see inside the heads of. We spend the entirety of the first book getting to know them as individuals before they even meet, we see their interactions in a non-romantic light for the first few chapters, and the romance doesn’t start to bloom until it makes sense based on what we know of the characters.

Dylan doesn’t just think Alek is hot and decide he likes him just because outta all the men on the ship theres just something about the one that happens to be the other main character (*cough* kaider *cough*)

The reason he likes Alek is because they shared a very intimate and emotionally charged scene together that strengthens their friendship and ends with with a physical embrace. Its kinda like that trope where a kid goes to a party and then sits on a patio and talks with a complete stranger about life for an hour and is convinced they’re totally in love by the end of it. 

Even if this exact scenario has never happened to you, you can see how someone so young ,and in Alek’s case vulnerable would develop a little bit of a crush

But even then, its just an infatuation at first. Something dumb and stupid that Dylan dismisses as such. It’s not till they share ANOTHER couple of emotionally charged and intimate moments in Behemoth that Dylan starts to take his crush more seriously, and only in Goliath does Dylan stop dismissing his feelings altogether. There is time devoted to Dylan coming to terms with the fact that maybe the crush is a bigger deal then it probably should be, and that he cant make it go away by telling himself that its a bad idea. 

The Leviathan Series is kinda a double edged sword to me. It is a love story, but done so well people dont think its a love story. When I talk other fans about it being a love story, they insist that it isnt. Its an adventure story because there’s so much action. Its a drama because the characters struggles don’t revolve around their relationship. It cant be a romance because there’s so much other stuff going on. But those elements dont mean its not a love story, those elements just mean its a competent one. 

There’s a reason that the last book closes on the romance coming to a fruition instead of the peace treaty signing. There’s a reason the bonus chapter is a fanservice one shot of them basically going to prom together. There’s a reason Goliath opens with the quote: “To everyone who loves a long secret romance, revealed at last.” 

Becoming emperor and ending the war wasn’t Alek’s destiny. Being an emperor at all is probably his ‘bad ending’ 

People make him incredibly uncomfortable, he cant take even the smallest criticism, sucks at anything to do with being in command, constantly doubts himself, and has a fundamental blind eye to gaging other people’s emotions. As a starting point the series could have easily made him overcome these things with an arc that would make him into an ideal leader, but they didnt go that rout because it wasnt important. 

The war was never the real plot of the book, but rather the setting. The lesson we learn by the end is basically that you have to let go of old ambitions sometimes and open yourself up to new ones. The new destiny that Alek made required him to abandon a throne he probably wouldnt have wanted in the long run. Dylan has to leave the Leviathan, but does so gladly because he understands that his destiny is fluid. Both of the main character arcs revolve around letting things go, and their mutual attraction is what pushes them to understand that. The priority of the series has always been the romance.

The fact that we think its not a romance story because the plot and characters manage to stand on their own is rather telling about the level of quality we expect in the genre. I think by calling Leviathan a love story it demands that other love stories take the time and effort Leviathan did to flesh out its world and characters before trying to get us invested in their relationship.

 I think that its incredibly pessimistic to say that if a romance story manages to execute other elements well it no longer counts as a romance. As if to say that romance as a narrative theme is so shitty that you need to dum everything else down to properly appreciate it. 

So often I see people praising books solely because there’s no romance in them, or because the romance has some new dumb twist that makes it not like other romances. Boy meets girl can be interesting on its own if boy and girl have names you can remember and personalities that you want to cheer for. Just because Leviathan is cool doesnt mean its not romantic.  

I’ve made no secret about my issues with the Lunar Chronicles narrative, but at least in the trainwreck of truly ludicrous cause and effect, it puts its characters first and foremost and uses the setting to its greatest advantage. It takes the time to explain why they do the things they do, why they like what they like, and even if the outcomes of their decisions are improbable, they still feel earned because the author makes sure to let you know why the plan would work in her world as opposed to ours. 

Saying that The Lunar Chronicles isnt a love story is insulting to the work. You dont read those books for the sci-fi or the plot. The plot’s a joke and the sci-fi is terrible. The world makes absolutely no sense and couldn’t exist anywhere within our reality. Not only is the science impossible, but identical to the foundation of any cyberpunk setting with even the smallest bit of thought put into the way shit works. (one example includes an evil mistress who doesnt give a enough of a shit about her pet hacker to supply regular haircuts, health inspections, or clean water but was kind enough to install artificial gravity in her satellite prison and keep it running even when she herself isnt aboard.) But the rivalries and friendships between the factions are unarguably excellent, and the obvious priority of the author when she was writing these books. 

And thats fine because she does it well, and if our mass perception of the quality of romance is any indication, its hard to do romance well. She is celebrated for doing the romance so well. 

So why cant romances that manage to do both be celebrated as romances? Why do we have to demean the YA romance genre to praise the YA romance genre? 

I meant for this post to be like a paragraph, mod out.