NIKLAUS /ᐠ - ˕ -マ Ⳋ

i didnt like.. passionately ship them at all (evident by the fact i never drew soupbegone31 and sidi in the same room except for that one damn kiss meter drawing lmao). it was moreso like .. me trying to kind of Force myself to Like Them becahse they're just the fandom standard. like Alrighttt i posted about the fandoms favourite ship can i get the little gold star sticker and go home now.

Like I said they're kind of mediocre. tbh. I think a lot of people only really ship them because they interact a lot and provide a pretty generic enemies-to-lovers trope but otherwise i find them bland and i find the dynamics between the other Psychonetworks a lot more interesting and appealing. This in itself is not a failing on the fandom's part, just more of personal preference honestly

However

a lot of the executions of the ship are reliant on.. very flanderized versions of Sidi and Soup (especially Sidi). They're portrayed very one-dimensionally and Sidi especially is often reduced to happy-go-lucky crazy (usually horny) Assimilation simp. For lack of a better descriptor. Which... in reality is just, not Sidi's character at all????? Sidi is definitely obnoxious at times but not in the ways people often portray them. Their enjoyment of Assimilation extends to the fact that Assimilation is something different. Once she shows up, the speedrun becomes boring and irrelevant because there's something new to focus on. However i don't think sidi was on screen slobbering and drooling and creaming their damn pants over Assimilation man

(that is to say; do what you want, i guess? i don't really care if you decide to make sidi act like that. i just think its irritating when this version of them is regarded as canon or typical to them when it is Definitely not.)

this honestly would warrant just,, a whole other analysis of Sidi's character and behaviours that i also don't want to get into here. However i will say; a lot of Sidi's character is sacrificed in order to promote yaoislop. That's the TLDR.

expanding on that a little; i think a lot of people execute this ship in a way that feels way too misogynistic to be comfortable. Despite not having an established gender, Sidi is often pushed into the role of the feminine psychonetwork or "the girl one" (which, can be okay at times, except in most examples sidi is often tokenized and the only non-masc/androgynous one. i'd be a hypocrite if i criticized the idea of sidi being fem-aligned alone, as my interpretation of her is a transgender woman, except... so are andre and conzer. its not JUST sidi JUST to push a certain dynamic)

from my twitter priv. this is a more crude wording of the point i'm making but ultimately sidi's character is completely boiled down in favour of yaoi and its irritating

okay so this is less of a fully fledged theory and more of something I noticed and pieced together. HOWEVER. hear me out.