I have seen an influx of posts on various social media sites organizing certain pairs in Vivid BAD SQUAD over others in terms of a relationship hierarchy. To put it more simply, people are insisting, for example, that "hamster headphones" and "coffee pancakes" are inherently closer than any other combination of the four. People are also making the opposite argument, trying to insist that "headphones pancakes" is a closer relationship than "hamster headphones", in one example.
I am writing this post to explain why you should not make these arguments. Not only are they reductive, minimizing the writing of some dynamics in favor of others, there is a bigger reason why you shouldn't talk about these dynamics in this manner— amatonormativity.
Amatonormativity encompasses a large set of societal beliefs that assume romance is inevitable, inherently good, and the ultimate form of relationship one can have. It is something deeply ingrained in various cultures, and people with unchecked amatonormativity often cause harm to aromantic people, such as myself. A big part of amatonormativity involves viewing relationships in a relationship hierarchy, where platonic relationships never seen as equal relationships to romantic relationships.
Now then, how and why does this apply to this debate on Vivid BAD SQUAD? After all, it's not like any of these dynamics are romantic in canon.
Except... when the fandom has these discussions, it ultimately comes down to the romantic ships they support. They always place the dynamics they see the most romantic chemistry in above the others, as it's what they interpreted from the text. How accurate these interpretations may be is irrelevant to this post, though.
What people are missing is that the relationship between the partners and non-partners in Vivid BAD SQUAD are indeed different, but this difference should never be conflated with "closeness". Contrary to popular belief, each dynamic of Vivid BAD SQUAD is well-developed— people simply ignore or push whatever props up their ships. People are so obsessed with shipping discourse that they're missing the point of this unit's relationships entirely.
Partners in Vivid BAD SQUAD's story have different boundaries and language compared to the bonds between teammates. However, the story makes a point that the partner dynamics are balanced and stabilized by the teammate dynamics. If it wasn't for An and Kohane, Akito and Touya might've never gotten back together in Main Story. If it wasn't for Akito and Touya, An and Kohane wouldn't have been able to resolve their codependency. VBS WL2 makes this even clearer— it has to be the four of them. Each dynamic is equally important. And this fandom needs to start treating it as such.
