#it's like. you guys are doing submission wrongggg you're creating sfw vanilla fifty shades

[casiavium]

Can't sleep again. Thinking about how I don't like knight/prince(ss) as a trope. Besides the fact that it's boring to me. This isn't "discourse" or a call out or anything it's just a personal interpretation and analysis

while yeah there's nothing wrong with that level of power imbalance in fiction, these tropes always act like that's a cute thing which I just find to be. 😬 y'know. Referring to a character as a "pet" for the royal one without understanding that that's. not a great dynamic to have. The "don't call them toxic or problematic!" When the relationship is inherently not equal and can never be without issues, but this can't possibly be discussed because then the person who ships it is a bad person 🙃

and for someee reason still bitching about the "more obvious" power imbalances like enemies, who most of the time end up being MORE equal because they're the same person same situation different fonts

It's fine to me when it's used as an insult (something something loyalty) and then there's discussion of "you know you mean so much more to me than that", or when there's a Very Obviously Fucked Up imbalance that is Very Obviously Not Normal and yet the one that gets the short end of the stick is like "fuck this I don't care that you think you're better than me. Your power only exists because I give you it, so be very careful how you use it" (and when they use it wrong there are consequences that don't get magically forgiven)

If the one with less control isn't very very aware of how much power the other has over them and could exert if they wanted to (but also the fact that the relationship and its genuineness hinges on their agreement) it gets a bit too concerning for me. If there isn't a certain level of meta intertextual analysis and understanding of the way the very much dominant/submissive dynamic works then it's just. Not interesting and often frustrating

Edit: this should have said intra-textual ("in the text itself", which I apparently not a word) not inter-textual (between texts)