#but this fetishization of every character must be an island untouched by love is simply not fun to me

[anetherealpoetess]

i'm not reblogging the original post because the op seems great and i don't want to hurt feelings. but this is such a fun-killing take i genuinely want to gnaw my arm down to the marrow of the sea-foamy bone:

"if the most interesting thing you can think of about a character is the ship you like them with, then I don't think you actually like that character very much."

romantic relationships where every lamb becomes the knife and every knife becomes the lamb are not interesting to you? or what about vampiric psychosexual laments full of blood-bound codependency where the lovers are each other's slow descent into decay and ruin? i mean, that's fun! that is objectively fun!

shipping is strangeness and sincerity and terror. it's vault-bright lucy and her irradiated wasteland-rotten ghoul. it's louis de pointe du lac's naked centering of lestat in a narrative other characters keep trying to invade but louis stubbornly just won't let them. it's these violent delights having violent ends. it's transgressing societal boundaries of right and wrong (an inherently empowering narrative for women and gay men who have been told what to do our whole damn lives.) it's paying homage to a cruel god but also that cruel god is an ordinary person traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape with you. it's hand in unloveable hand! it's hand on my cowardly heart!

the most intersting thing about many many many characters are their romantic entanglements. and that's okay! it's more than okay! it's lush and febrile nutritional goodness that incapsulates all aspects of fiction and therefore life, from horror to devotion, from tenderness to gut-shocking betrayals, from loving monstrosity to hateful divinity.

if you ever catch me not shipping, call a priest. i've been possessed.