[ SECRET POST #5896 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5896 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 43 secrets from Secret Submission Post #844.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, I feel like mainstream fiction does default to romance over friendship annoyingly often when it comes to its prominent het relationships specifically. I say that as someone who has het ships. I say that as someone who was ride-or-die for Mulder/Scully, which was a pretty quintessential and divisive canonical het ship. So like, I'm not actually here to vilify canon het ships, and I'm definitely not here to harass people who ship a lot of canon het ships. I'm just saying that I do feel like, if you're someone who would like to see a prominent male character and a prominent female character have a close relationship in canon and not have it become romantic...there are pretty strong odds you will end up disappointed.

When it comes to anything other than het, I agree with you though, that outside of fandom it's largely a non-issue.

I guess for people who are just looking for platonic relationships that are central and prominent, it probably feels like you can't escape the shipping, because in mainstream canon it's the obligatory het ships left and right, and then when you turn to canon it's just oodles of slash every which way you look (and also some femslash in there too).

I can kind of sympathize to a degree, but at the end of the day people are just here for a good time, and that means shipping for a lot of people. I feel like knowing how to use AO3's search function to it's fullest potential is probably key to minimizing frustration if you're gen-only or gen-focused. Beyond that...*shrugs* sorry bro, it is what it is.

[(Anonymous)]

When it comes to anything other than het, I agree with you though, that outside of fandom it's largely a non-issue.

There's also the fact that mainstream media has recognized shipping as a hot clickbait commodity. So even if you avoid fannish spaces and don't care about whatever intra-fandom ship wank is going on, you're still force-fed clickbait from whatever shitty online TV magazine has picked up the latest ship portmanteau.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT - it's funny you say that, because I am definitely very strongly a noromo when it comes to Mulder and Scully, I love them as a platonic soulmate relationship and wish they hadn't got together. And I definitely love m+f platonic soulmate relationships in general, both in canon and fic. So, I'm very much in the group of people that's liable to be disappointed about this!

However - while it is true that canons have a tendency to default to het shipping, I actually *don't* think it's necessarily because shows think friendship doesn't matter. I think it's more so that (a) media thinks that everyone needs a romance to be happy and (b) media thinks that everyone is het and (c) media has a tendency to cast as few women characters as possible. So what ends up happening is that they feel they need to get a male character into a romantic relationship, and they just pair him up with the one woman already on the show. But it's not necessarily because they feel that romance is of all-conquering importance. And I think you can see that because a lot of the time the romance really is perfunctory and boring and dull - so it's not like the original writers are obsessed with romance, it's just a box they feel they have to tick. So I think the issue isn't really so much that canon media doesn't care about friendship and thinks het romance is the most important thing in the universe; rather, it's that canon media just doesn't like writing women characters.

And then when it comes to fandom, yeah, shipping is just what the people want.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm. I do with most of what you're saying here, but it also doesn't really change the end result for people who are gen-focused, IMO.

If there's one thing I do disagree with, it's that I think many writers DO devalue male/female friendships specifically. Not male/male friendship, though, that shit is crack for a lot of writers. But het friendships specifically get treated as either totally extraneous or just a stepping stone to romance a painful amount of the time.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

That should say "I do agree with most of what you're saying here"

[(Anonymous)]

Mainstream canon defaulting to het romance is the reason I hate when slash shippers say "If one of them were a woman, it would be obvious to everyone that they're in love" when they're trying to prove how "canon" their ship is. It's true, but not because there's canon evidence that they're in love. It's true because if one of them were a woman, everyone knows they will canonically end up together even without any previous canon signs of romantic feelings because we know that's how media treats almost all male/female friendships. So to that I'd answer, we all need to ask how obvious it really is in the canon text that this male and female character are in love before saying the same thing about these two male or two female characters.

That is, if I thought it was important to prove your ship is canon. Which I don't, but a lot of people do.