#i'm aspec and experienced; i can tell when a creator is genuinely thinking about sex not being the be all end all

[chocolatepot]

It's truly bizarre to me that people will be jealous that ... it's not even that "our ship happened" but that we got emotionally involved in a show about an m/m couple while they got emotionally involved in a show that ultimately was never about that but whose showrunner for one reason or another teased that it could have a canon m/m ship on the side and then didn't follow through.

And that then instead of being mad at the showrunner who teased the ship, they decide to restructure reality so that two men falling in love and working through their relationship is less queer than two men, uh, not falling in love or having any kind of explicit romantic interaction. Every time.

It's bizarre to me that the more actual queer rep we get in mainstream romance, the more queer people in fandom denigrate said rep in favor of, typically, cowardly or homophobic creators who wanted to avoid anything direct. It's like internalizing abuse. You're absolutely right that people are saying that the only real queer stories are sad ones or unsatisfying ones.

There's something really interesting (and annoying) that keeps popping up whenever OFMD gets dragged into discourse, and it's this pervasive idea that, somehow, OFMD counts as "less" of a queer show precisely because the story explicitly centers around a canonically gay couple who wind up together in the end.

You can think whatever you want about stories where the queerness always remains subtextual, unrequited or more focused on the pining than actually getting together. I don't find them satisfying, personally, and that's just my taste. I don't like that I can so easily name dozens of stories off the top of my head where the queerness is either all subtext, relegated entirely to unrequited or unresolved pining, or one character confesses feelings to another only to automatically die. I don't like that this seems like the default for queer stories.

It's okay to like those stories, it's okay to like the unresolved tension. But OFMD isn't somehow "less queer" than those stories because it's a romcom where the main characters get together. It's not less queer because it's a story that loves being explicit about how queer it is. Would you also turn on any Hallmark romance and get annoyed with how much "fanservice" it had for the straight couple to get together? At its core, OFMD is a queer romcom, and you can't get talk down to it for being what it is and expect to be taken seriously.

I just don't like the implication that there's something more queer about our pain than our love and success. I don't like the implication that the "truly" queer stories are the ones that don't get satisfying conclusions, that queerness is at its most pure when it's relegated to subtext or heartbreak.

In conclusion: if I see one more take about how OFMD is "hetero-coded" or whatever nonsense because it ends with the main couple happy, together, and in love, I'm going to start biting

[thegreatzeldini]

#I cannot emphasize enough how clear it was that WWDITS was going to do this btw

#as I said at the time: 'their love is actually bigger than sex' when people are asking for queer romance is a textbook play

#especially blatant in a canon with a central m/f couple who fuck all the time and are shown as extremely loving

#i'm aspec and experienced; i can tell when a creator is genuinely thinking about sex not being the be all end all

#and when they just don't want to have two men as part of a meaningful romantic plotline

ah ain't that just the fuckin truth

There's something really interesting (and annoying) that keeps popping up whenever OFMD gets dragged into discourse, and it's this pervasive idea that, somehow, OFMD counts as "less" of a queer show precisely because the story explicitly centers around a canonically gay couple who wind up together in the end.

You can think whatever you want about stories where the queerness always remains subtextual, unrequited or more focused on the pining than actually getting together. I don't find them satisfying, personally, and that's just my taste. I don't like that I can so easily name dozens of stories off the top of my head where the queerness is either all subtext, relegated entirely to unrequited or unresolved pining, or one character confesses feelings to another only to automatically die. I don't like that this seems like the default for queer stories.

It's okay to like those stories, it's okay to like the unresolved tension. But OFMD isn't somehow "less queer" than those stories because it's a romcom where the main characters get together. It's not less queer because it's a story that loves being explicit about how queer it is. Would you also turn on any Hallmark romance and get annoyed with how much "fanservice" it had for the straight couple to get together? At its core, OFMD is a queer romcom, and you can't get talk down to it for being what it is and expect to be taken seriously.

I just don't like the implication that there's something more queer about our pain than our love and success. I don't like the implication that the "truly" queer stories are the ones that don't get satisfying conclusions, that queerness is at its most pure when it's relegated to subtext or heartbreak.

In conclusion: if I see one more take about how OFMD is "hetero-coded" or whatever nonsense because it ends with the main couple happy, together, and in love, I'm going to start biting