#note: logical arguments probably won't work for me because this is an emotional issue for me

[frostyviking]

Hey, maybe you could check out a counter pov for the whole light fury romance plot which is posted on my Tumblr? It's too long to fit in an ask box. I know you might not like the fact that the light fury is being used as an excuse to separate Hiccup and Toothless, but I have a feeling Dean will be able to develop her as a decent character and convince us all that she is indeed something that Toothless is currently missing in his life, in the same way that he showed the need for Valka.

Post here

my reply is under the read more because oops this got long

My issue with your argument is that you’re kinda reducing Toothless to be a basic animal. You’re saying that it has to be a female night fury so that Toothless will be interested and choose her over Hiccup. “it can’t be just any ordinary night fury either as Toothless would surely pick Hiccup over any random night fury” I’m sorry but that just rubs me wrong. Animals (Toothless too) can be motivated beyond sex. If the cons of staying is more than the pros, animals will leave. 

I think the opposing ideas is because we’re seeing this issue differently. You’re trying to see what will entice Toothless to get him to leave, while I’m seeing what will happen that will force him and the other dragons to leave. Just note that in the books, Toothless never leaves Hiccup. All the dragons are leaving, but Toothless chose to stay with Hiccup for the rest of his life.

And this is exactly my issue with romance stories. The romantic interest is seen as more important, more valuable, than friends or family. It’s still choosing to abandon platonic relationships to pursue this romantic one. 

I believe there doesn’t even need to be another night fury. The books didn’t have any love interest to convince the dragons that they need to leave. Hiccup and Toothless didn’t need some other dragon to be willing to explore their world further. I personally believe that posing the issue of the dragons leaving as something that is personal wants vs needs of the society to be much more powerful than including a love interest.

“I have a feeling Dean will be able to develop her as a decent character and convince us all that she is indeed something that Toothless is currently missing in his life, in the same way that he showed the need for Valka.”

I trust Dean, I really really do. But I don’t want there to be a new reason to explain this female dragon. I don’t this to appear so everything is okay now. It’s not. I think we have different thoughts on Valka’s purpose. Valka in the books was also never really a mother figure. She’s not here to be a mother. I really believe she’s to take on the position of a world of dragons away from humans. “People can’t change” and maybe she’s right. How many nice words and forbidden friendships do we need to change people like Drago? People who will use dragons for their own gain.

What is Toothless missing? We were never shown that he even slightly misses other night furies. Is he even aware of this type of thought? That he may be the last of his kind? A cat wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care if it was the last one on earth. That’s an advance form of existential thinking that not many animals possess. The only thing we’ve seen Toothless miss is flying on his own from gotnf. But that was just to get Hiccup his helmet. He gave up that gift right after. As far as we’ve seen, Toothless has everything he needs already.

Honestly trying to convince me a potential romance being okay is moot. I’m personally very against romance. I don’t ship things, I simply despise it. There’s no convincing me. I also want to address other parts of your post

The thing about your comment about the “carbon copy Forbidden Friendship” is that there’s already rumors that Toothless meeting this light fury is going to be a forbidden friendship-esque scene. 

Also yes, httyd2 showed that Hiccup can do more when it comes to the whole “A chief protects his own”. He was able to save the dragons from Drago and Berk. But at what cost? Hiccup ran away, so Stoick, Gobber, the other kids went after him. Berk was pretty much left defenseless. Hiccup saved the dragons, but what about the Vikings? We never learned if anyone got hurt from the ice. And what if “his own” are the ones that are hurting the dragons? That’s the dilemma Hiccup and Toothless have to deal with. httyd is all about Hiccup showing other people that humans and dragons can live in peace. It’s possible. But proof of it just isn’t enough. 

I believe that the ending of httyd is a comment on the selfishness of human nature, and how our stubborn refusal to change can be harming to others. Just like how we’re a cause for the extinction of animals. We just take their homes, have animals as pets in spaces that are much too small for them to live in. I think having this romantic component is not necessary, there’s already so much here to use. It just muddles this issue.

As for the light fury design, too many people are trying to find reasons through biological examples. But this isn’t real life. People deliberately made each choice to design this light fury exactly as she appears. Even then, this post brilliantly explains why the biological reasonings people have been using don’t work. Of course there are exceptions, but this doesn’t make sense when considering what the majority of animal patterning looks like. (I won’t say anymore, the post covers it perfectly). We shouldn’t be justifying things as an exception. “This woman in engineering is just an exception, all other women aren’t capable of this” calling the woman an exception is ignoring the larger question “why aren’t there more women in engineering?” Saying this light fury is an exception to natural patterning, is ignoring “why did the artists choose to do this?”

I can’t accept this light fury because 1) she’s been described consistently as a love interest and 2) she is following the female-anthropomorphized animal trope that too many companies do. The first point is already hard for me to accept but the second one is just making this impossible. I love and trust Dreamworks, but not Universal. I’m afraid they had influence in this film. 

I hope you don’t see this as me just ignoring your thoughts. I just cannot accept any justification for this. Especially not when comparing to how the books approached the issue. I know different mediums, different ways of approach, but this is still imo way out of whack to how httyd usually is. Hopefully the movie will prove me wrong, but everything we’ve gotten is just the opposite of what I’ve been expecting in the past 4 years. 

[motorcyclegirlfriends]

it's about the pattern. not JJ's pattern, all shows and f/f ships. we've seen actors/producers do this many times. everyone thinks they're special and should be judged on their life of goodness. no. an action can be judged against the systemic pattern too. "not the story we're telling, just friends, i don't see it, won't happen, family show"-- this constitutes a visible pattern. the pattern is homophobic, i don't care what your feefees were at the time. also "ignorance of the law..."

Late ass reply, and I honestly hate to bring the topic up, but here we go:

“Family show” is different, actually homophobic. Has the secret meaning of “seeing gay people living their lives is harmful to children”. (This is what I mean by an innately homophobic phrase)

“Not the story we’re telling” is shady to me, because it feels like “we’re not being activists, we’re telling normal stories” which is offensive, but it might just actually be their way of saying “we’re not gonna go that direction” ? Depends on if my vibes about it are right.

“They’re only friends” is just alerting us to whether or not they’re gonna get together.

This isn’t a package deal. Saying one of these things doesn’t mean you mean or think the others, regardless of what other people have said in the past.

And the way they emphatically said it wasn’t, “you’re crazy for thinking it’s a possibility!” 

It seemed more like, “everyone is going crazy for this thing that’s not actually gonna happen.” Like a half put-on exasperation. Exasperation that we have no reason to believe exists because the ship is gay. 

(The common theory is that Jeremy’s reaction had to do with the fandom’s intensity. It’s both eclipsing of the canon content that they’re actually working on on purpose, and has been historically aggressive. Personally, I think Melissa was just kinda going with it for humor.)

And just in case anyone was wondering: these writers deciding not to make both of their leads wlw just isn’t homophobic.

There is indeed a pattern of not having representation in the media, not including diversity in shows over and over and over again, when writers who aren’t a minority should still be able to relate to these people enough to tell stories that include them. They should be able to see themselves in these people.

If they can’t, that hints at a larger issue within them...

But shipping is different. 

Someone can’t force themselves to ship something different than their orientation. A straight writer wouldn’t feel pleasure in writing a gay relationship any more than a gay writer would feel pleasure in writing a straight relationship.

Any more than a gay person would feel pleasure in watching a straight relationship.

Expecting a straight person to change their lead- who is often their favorite character and who they most relate to- so that they start dating someone of the same sex, when they themselves aren’t of that orientation and can’t feel the emotion of the relationship, is expecting too much. 

If that decision were made, it would be specifically for the benefit of the fans, for the cause, and maybe because they’re logically interested in the prospect. But they would not feel it in a romantic, emotional way. Not the way we do.

And writers write things they want to see more than they write for other people to see it.

If you’ve written fanfiction, you know that you don’t want to write for a ship you don’t ship. You might do it from time to time, in small doses for people who request something about them, but your main focus is the ship that you do like. (Side note: imagine your frustration if the ship you do like to write about is massively less popular than the one you don’t.)

This might be why most lgbt+ characters are side characters. Because the writers can’t relate to them in that way, and they want the most important character to also be their favorite character. 

They can’t project themselves onto the characters and feel like they’re experiencing the romance. 

And if the story is romance-focused, then it is especially unlikely that they’d have the main character be gay. Not unless there is some degree of fluidity in their sexuality. 

The solution is to have writers who can relate. 

Lgbt+ writers.

When writers see that the fans like something a lot, they take a second look at it, and if they agree, they might change the story. 

But straight writers will never agree about gay chemistry, because they can’t feel it.

And so we need more wlw/mlm/etc. writers out there, so that when we show a writer that this other ship has chemistry, they’ll be able to feel it and then possibly turn the story in that direction, instead of only advancing the gay ships that they had designated from the beginning. 

This is where Supergirl has gone wrong, in (what it looks like) pushing Ali Adler, lesbian writer, off the show. That’s what we should be raging about. 

That a writer who might have seen the chemistry is gone. 

Not that these writers don’t personally see the chemistry of a specific ship.

Also, you can’t say “let’s compare it to the rest of society” and then leave out the fact that they have an actual canon lesbian ship. 

That’s the full picture. 

And not just because they have some positive track record that absolves them, but because it means that this isn’t “give us a gay character!” to which they respond with “~We don’t want to tell that story~.” 

(Or show us that, in never having a gay character or only having one for five minutes)

This is, “Make this specific character gay!” 

And then they respond with, “No, actually, we plan to keep that one straight.”

So if this is the reason that what they said is homophobic, then you’re also mad at the actors for just knowing what the writers are doing.

If I had gotten a lot of asks sent to me saying “Lena and Kara might actually end up being canonically together!” I might have responded in the same way.

“They’re not gonna get together, they’re (canonically) only friends.”

Now, I’d have more tact than Jeremy, because I know people’s real feelings are involved in this, but even if I were blunt about it, it wouldn’t make me homophobic. 

And your “ignorance of the law” argument just doesn’t apply to the fandom’s “feefees”.

Because that’s what's happening. 

It’s not that the cast was ignorant that what they were saying was homophobic (because it wasn’t), it’s that they were ignorant that lgbt+ fans’ feelings would be hurt because they hold the ship close to their heart.

It’s like if someone called the rainbow flag ugly, not realizing that people are very emotionally attached to it’s image. 

It’s kind of like, “They should probably know that people might feel that way...” but calling the flag ugly isn’t actually homophobic.

Now, if they think it’s ugly because it reminds them of gay people, that’s homophobic. 

If they called it ugly to purposefully hurt gay people, that’s homophobic.

But we can’t know that that’s what they’re thinking from just that statement alone, just like we can’t know what Jeremy and Melissa were thinking from just their statements. 

(This is where examples of their past “allyship” come into play. It’s not “Melissa was on glee so she can’t be homophobic.” It’s “Hey, because of their track record, we have no reason to think there was anything secretly nefarious behind what they said. They just didn’t realize how seriously wlw take their non-canon ships.”)

And yet people have been automatically projecting homophobia onto what they said.

They’re placing mockery of gay fans or feelings of disdain for two women being together onto the event when it just isn’t there.

If anything, I think if Jeremy and Melissa were actually uncomfortable with Supercorp, they’d have been exponentially more careful with their words.