Yeah, shipper on deck is a delicate trope. It can be a lot of fun and capture the excitement of watching your friends get together. But most of the time its done to just to impress upon the audience HOW CUTE the couple is while reducing the supporting characters to empty mouth pieces.
see this is why my (probably) canonically aro/ace character is in my long line of "characters who are a minority but don't really talk about it" i have a female character who is a lesbian. this mostly comes up when the fans of the reality show she is forced to be a star of ship her with one of the guys.
as an addendum to what roach said and a little off topic BUT... my friendgroup has a 19 yr old member (that was 17ish? 18ish? when they became friends with the group, somewhere around there) that's AFAB that was incredibly uncomfortable/scared of RPing female-centered smut even tho they wanetd to, and that was tied to being incredibly uncomfortable with their own body. But after talking to us SCARY TERRIBLE ADULTS for a couple of years not only are they way way more comfortable with their body but they're actually enjoying RPing their female characters and female smut more than they ever have. There's no more fear there. Because we were supportive and talked to them about things and being more comfortable to explore what they have and explore it with their boyfriend in a safe setting, and the like. (Also helped them discover their non binary feelings and come to terms with it and be ok with coming out but I digress.) I know I know...w should be branded for life for being so gross and awful as to talk sexuality with a Literal Child tho
i am super confused by people headcanoning hunk as aroace because he's gross or something - from what i've seen of VLD, Hunk is like, top eligible bachelor there. A fine puddin', to translate something my grandma would say
I (mentally, I haven't written anything yet about him) ship him with Lance, mostly, tbh. Hunk is a sweetie who needs more love.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's like "why isn't Hunk/Lance a bigger ship. I mean I know why. But why isn't it."
I am guilty of this, a lot. In more recent fics, I at least tried to specify which parts of which continuity I was using, but I also wrote a FMA fic starting in 2010 that was not as good about this. It only borrowed one thing from the 2003 anime, but that one thing made no friggin sense given how the universe works in Brotherhood, and you know, I regret some stuff now.
Re: Ace discussion, not sure if this is the exact place to bring it up, but given the topic of discussion I feel asking for advice to avoid fanfic gripes may be acceptable? the short version is the ship I'm writing is between two asexual people but is definitely romantic and intimate. They're not really interested in sex, but cuddling with and without clothes is high on their to do list. I guess my question is, are they actual asexual? I want to make sure I label the relationship right. Also the world needs more loving asexual intimacy.
i think they'd qualify. asexual basically means "not sexually attracted to people." like, asexuals can have sex drives but not sexual attraction.
I would say that yes, they are asexual? The key factor is a lack of sexual attraction, lack on interest in actually having sex, though you can still have a sex drive or even engage in sex out of curiosity/for science/whatever. A couple of my favorite fics feature asexuals who like to cuddle/make out but just don't want to engage in sex, or who have sex drives/ have sex but their attraction is strictly aesthetic/emotional (Both Homestuck fics: The Ace Thing by NoBrandHero which is a Bro/John and Beans & Bones by sumomomochi which is a Dave/John.)
why am i suddenly questioning my sexuality screaming aside, yeah, that's pretty much a textbook definition of asexuality from how i know it haha.
It seemed to me that Lance/Hunk/Pidge should be the obvious OT3 setup. I was pretty surprised how little of that there was when I first went trawling for fic. (Less surprised now having become more familiar with The Discourse, ofc.)
did they... hit publish on accident or something? I just. Why. Like I'll sometimes create a draft before I have content ready to post just to fuss with tags (aka procrastinate on actually writing lmao) but I'd never fuckin PUBLISH that without the content O_o
Were they the type of person who thinks that a story has to have a unique title, and they wanted to get in before the title was "stolen?" (There are multiple book titles out there with the same name, though wildly different plots and genres.) I am not sure I understand about wanting to get a draft up, this would be because my "drafts" are the word documents I write in.
This is really just a thing in fandoms for musicals, but when people incorporate lyrics from the show into the story, especially if it's in a really different context. It's usually just distracting. Come up with your own metaphors, darn it!
yess, people use full lines of Hamilton lyrics as dialog in Hamilton fics that are otherwise completely naturalistic and it never works on the other hand, if you cleverly incorporate phrases, i'm a big fan
