#being from central canada is so difficult lmao!!

[thisdress]

ok but if taylor ends up coming here after i went through all of this shit to go to a US show i will cry so hard adjkaslkdsakl

[allbeendonebefore]

a crackship concept: ralph x oliver. (am i kicked out of the fandom yet? lmao) but since you’ve lived in both provinces for a while, any input on this?

It’s not a crackship by a long shot since they both regularly interact (i mean... they should anyway) (are we judging who interacts with whom by what standard at this point lmao)

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it because while I appreciate them as characters and I think they have a good dynamic, I also find the historical imbalances really annoying and hard to shake. I personally prefer to see them as unlikely friends than as romantic partners just because for me as a westerner theres this power imbalance and (mutual!) misunderstanding that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I really don’t like it portrayed as ‘the petty anglos who hate quebec’ pairing either. I’m not saying at all that its not impossible or that it’s somehow inherently wrong (or that i’d never draw it), just that its not my cup of tea. 

but let’s return to them as characters for a moment rather than vessels for my own historical baggage in a universe where oliver didnt view the prairies as property and the people in them as second or third class citizens of the country he pulled around him out of his own paranoia and selfishness aka ideas that i still see repeated by ontarians today and then watch as albertans with only a foggy idea of the full context take those sentiments personally and then these separatist assholes co-opt and stoke those negative feelings instead of resolving them [deep breaths] [exhale]. 

I really like thinking of them as competitive friends or as driven debate partners i guess? and i feel that in their case it doesn’t translate well into romance. Oliver is horribly sheltered and self centered and says things without thinking constantly, or he is passive aggressive and hard to read. He treats Ralph like a child or an idiot or both and doesn’t consult him on his feelings or opinions and then acts shocked and surprised when Ralph loses it on him. Ralph likewise acts like the sort of person who is a straight talker and straight shooter, but his actual behaviour tends to be avoidance rather than confrontation. He explodes in a reactive way later instead of thinking after he bottles his feelings because That’s Macho, and his whole self perception is built on Refusing to be perceived as this hippie dippy liberal urban elite bastard and wait why DOESN’t oliver think he’s progressive?! And how come the easiest emotion around him is always anger?

but yeah you can see that it’s difficult for me to separate my complicated political feelings on the subject. I really enjoyed my time in Ontario and I met so many different kinds of people there, but there were also a lot of these... little subtle things that add up and grate on me. Like looking at the monument to the Ontarians who died in the Red River and Northwest “Rebellions”, or having someone say “The setting is Alberta but clearly urban” as if those things were mutually exclusive, or the assumption that Of Course you moved to Toronto because IMAGINE being a queer person seeking higher education in ALBERTA of all places, or people who just outright hated Alberta because all they see in the news is Alberta hating them for apparently No Reason. I really had to stop and think several times about these little innocuous comments and things that I was constantly encountering from people about what Alberta was supposedly like, and it’s hard to explain to people that when you make comments like this it does nothing but add fuel to the fire of anger and hatred towards central Canada back home - and trust me there’s just as much misunderstanding in Alberta about what Ontario is as there is there and that gets used for political and economic gain. 

tldr i would take a lot of convincing to see this as a romantic pairing precisely because of my lived experience in both provinces and because of my historical background. It’s actually easier than I make it out to be because they actually do have TONS in common besides being the two loudmouth money-and-power-hungry anglos, if oliver could get off his high horse for two seconds and ralph could drag himself out of the tar pit he’s always wallowing in, maybe they could go somewhere interesting. I’d be curious to see it. one thing i really liked about both provinces was the thunderstorms... trap them in a cabin in a thunderstorm and just let them go at each other emotionally until they’ve gone through and got it all out maybe, haha.