There is always a fandom discourse about how fandom is too much about shipping and romantic love, but my beef is actually with people being too fond of the idea of a family as the purest form of love and the strongest unit.
Starting from pople tending to turn every story about siblings who are not besties into this huge tragedy instead of awknowledging that maybe, sometimes, people are not close with their siblings. Or that people are so weird about mothers.
But what irks me even more is the tendency to decide that two people who are close in canon have a "sibling coded relationship" which suddenly also means that shipping them together is wrong. Or if a character has an older person in their life whom they look up to - well that is their parent now!!!! They can't fuck their parent!!!!
There is this underlying idea that elevating characters into a familial bond is above such concepts as romantic love or sex. Which sucks because that is not what the concept found family means - it was meant to describe the queer experience of finding your people and community from outside of your blood relatives, and it was never meant to say that there can't also be romantic relationships within that community.
And it is not even always about the fact that I want to ship my blorbo with everyone who comes near him (although I absolutely do), but I think that sometimes there can be meaningful dynamics that are not about family. I want my blorbo to have friends, lovers, partners, mentors, neighbours, a trusted older person who they can call to but is not their parent.
Maybe some of this rises from the fact that family for me is something complicated and sore and not as important as my friends and community. But also the idea of a nuclear family as the pillar of society is such a conservative talking point and it is weird that people keep throwing a fit about romance and dating as societal standard but don't seem to notice this one.
@hollowedskin re: the conversation we were having earlier
I was literally just reading this going "I have GOT to send this to Sugar".
Hhhhhh the idea of the nuclear family as the platonic ideal of all relationships that all types of relationships must mimic is killing me I hate it so much...
Sibling-coded.. sorry please tell me how you replicate growing up right beside someone who you both love and loathe and can never escape and your entire relationship as an adult haunted by your childhood.
How exactly do you get that with Chris from work?














