Øjeblik

Don’t love it, but the Plot wrapped up, and they tied a bow on top with some secondary romance. Cool.

It works as a bow because we expect to see it. We, as an audience, are conditioned by the stories that come out of the American cultural machine, to see marriage and babies as the correct end point. It’s very Hayes Code. Again, bc I’ve been mad about it for years: think about that damn HP epilogue. Or more recently, Captain America dipping out of his own character for a girl he was owed. 

We are conditioned to accept romance as a valid ending to any story.

So conditioned, in fact, that people who are new to writing, or not confident in their writing, think it’s correct, and satisfying, and a full on requirement. It’s in their head that the peak of the story is the romantic pairing, so once that’s done? Checkmark. The end. Have a nice day. Don’t forget to kudos and comment. 

Again, I’m talking about you, my fellow fic writers. Mainstream is bad about it, and I assume booktok is too, but we’re horrible. 

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A while back, I read a long fic, multi chapter AU, over 70k. It was very, very well written. The pacing was great, the prose was moving, the characters were fantastic. Backstory, worldbuilding, everything was on point. I was absolutely thrilled. Yes, there was a ship, it was fanfic after all, but it wasn’t the entire plot. 

I’m going to swap out everything but the plot shape on this so it can’t be identified, but, let me tell you about it as a vivid example. 

We’re in the middle of an alien invasion apocalypse, and Jack is a mid tier leader of his compound, and very protective of his family inside. Jill shows up with a couple of kids she rescued, and wants to stay. Jack doesn’t trust her, but gets overruled by the Commander guy. Jill stays. Her rescued kiddos and Jack’s family get closer, and one of them has an implant from the aliens that puts him in extra danger. The aliens are getting better at fighting the humans, and it’s obvious that Jack’s compound can’t just keep their head down. Jill argues to the full cast of characters that they should go attack the alien base, not just hunker down and cross their fingers. Especially bc little Timmy and the implant are in danger. Over a few months, and many arguments, and many skirmishes with aliens, Jack and Jill get closer, and have a clear enemies to lovers arc. But, their connection is being driven by the whole Imminent Alien Apocalypse thing, and caring about little Timmy, and the danger is getting more and more perilous with each chapter. The commanders finally agree that yeah, time to go fight the Big Boss Alien, and they don’t know if it’ll work, but after 65k words, we’re going to go for it instead of hiding in the shadows. As they’re getting ready to go save the world. Jack and Jill finally admit that they love each other bc they’re both worried about the other one dying during the big battle. They promise to stay together forever and get married and have their own kids after the fight is done. 

They kiss. They fuck for 3k words. The fic ends. 

Seriously. They fell asleep post orgasm, and that was the end of the last chapter and there was never an epilogue added. 

What happened with the aliens? No clue. Did their plan work? Doesn’t matter. What about all the other characters who had sub plots? Fuck em. Lil Timmy? Dead, for all I know. 

The main pairing got nekkid and horizontal, so we’re finished here.

Based on the writer's final end note, they were happy with their story, and how it ended. 

I could tweak some things in how that story flowed, adjust a bit of tone, reframe a few things, and make that final beat feel satisfying and complete. You’d make their connection the central plot as a will they/won’t they, and make the theme about how if they work together they can defeat the aliens, and you’d end on the implication that they’ll win easily. Whether I’d enjoy that story or not, I recognize that it can be done well if it was the intention. 

That author was so skilled. I was anticipating an excellent final battle. They had written small battles already and I knew they could handle bigger. It was going to be amazing. 

Cutting off like that was a betrayal of their story they’d been telling. I read the comments. A lot of folks were thrilled. Some mentioned that they were glad they stopped there. I had to stare into the middle distance for a while. 

All the work they’d put into the rest of the story got pushed aside because you’re supposed to end on the romantic plot point, aren’t you? I’ve reread it, and I’m confident that the writer loved both action stories and romance stories, and combined them, but when they got to the romantic conclusion – which was placed exactly where it should be in the story they were telling – the part of them that enjoys romances checked the box that said Done. 

They didn’t question it. 

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Another version of this you may have seen? Magic Healing Penis. ‘Oh no, the Character is dying of Mysterious Illness #4, but then they fell in love and got dicked down real good, and they’re going to live! Because Love! It’s a Miracle!’ 

Wish fulfillment is a huge part of fanfiction. From the start, we’ve been writing the things we wish were there in canon.  

I know it's going to skew towards soft epilogues. Again, not judging that. I, too, would love it if all my mental and physical health issues could be solved by borrowing some dude’s penis. That sounds neato. 

The mental health version of it frustrates me in particular (if you’ve read my stuff, you already knew that) because very few people believe that sex will cure your cancer in real life. 

It’s much easier to believe, and internalize, that your mental health troubles will be vanquished by finding a partner. It won’t. Pieces of it, maybe. But it is not a silver bullet. You didn’t swap anxiety for a boyfriend. You now have anxiety AND a boyfriend. If he doesn’t suck, he’ll be helpful as you deal with the anxiety. 

I do not believe that what you enjoy reading dictates who you are. Enjoying Game of Thrones, doesn’t mean you’re horny about your uncle. 

I’m talking about the reverse. Cultural amatanormativity seeps into your brain and is reinforced by hundreds and thousands of stories from the time you’re a little kid, real life, family, news, movies, books, all of them saying that once you find a partner and fall in love and get married, you’ll be happy, and then you write that message yourself.

I’ve seen, just in the last week, a dozen posts in this category that are freaking me out. Several were – hopefully hyperbolic – laments that if they had a partner, all their problems would be solved. One outright said that they know they’re worthless because no one has ever loved them. 

Idk that person, but they were, as far as I could tell, a teenage girl, saying the exact same thing that young men on the incel teeter totter say. 

One said that they’ll know they’re forgiven for (unspecified thing) once they find a partner. Jfc. I am writing something right now as a critically unhealthy mindset that needs to be addressed. 

Romance isn’t a cure-all. Romance isn’t an indicator of your value. Romance isn’t a necessity.

The presence of romance in a story doesn’t automatically make it the most important piece of the story, but damn if it isn’t easy to slide into that. 

Maybe you’ve seen posts about how it sucks that friendship is automatically sidelined once a girlfriend gets involved. Or how a new boyfriend expects to immediately outrank your friends. Or how you can live with a friend, but obviously that’s temporary, and you’ll end up living with spouses. 

We do that to fiction. 

If there’s a single drop of romance in there, it’s easy to slip into the amatanormativity, and make it the end goal. The most important. The final beat. The thing that the rest of the story serves. 

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As much as this is pointing to the connections in real life, I am talking about writing, and about fanfiction. 

Fanfic as a culture has a compounding factor that doesn’t exist elsewhere. 

We can, and often do, click on the ship tag.

We join fandoms because of a ship, and view the entirety of canon, and every connected story, through that lens. We center that romantic relationship in a way that can’t exist outside fic bc we’re the only ones sitting around telling thousands of stories about the same characters falling in love.

And we absolutely skew toward romance not friendship. Go have a look at the difference in kudos/clicks/comments between tags that have an And instead of a Slash if you haven’t thought about it before. 

There are fandoms with ships so overwhelmingly dominant that others may as well not exist. Writers will include that ship in the background, or include it then add a pre-slash, so their fic gets noticed at all. If the fic involves them getting together during it – and you know how much we love writing those – then the assumption, unless loudly stated otherwise, is that it's the whole point of the story. If they’re getting together, that must be the throughline of the story.

Recently, though far from the first time, I saw a comment that a fic shouldn’t have an Angst with a Happy Ending tag because it didn’t end in exultantly happy kisses and marriage. I get those comments on multiple of mine. I also get comments on fics without that tag from people who are upset that the ship didn’t end exultantly happy. I never promised that. It’s still expected. 

I’m not talking about when it’s a tragedy. 

Fics that have an open ending for the romance. Fics that don’t center the romance. Fics that let the problems continue after the ship gets together. Fics where romance, love, or having a crush didn’t magically save the day. 

There’s a bit of a broken expectation problem, which stacks on the reading comprehension problem, and has a dash of ‘that’s right, it goes in the square hole’. 

The combination is not ideal. 

All fiction, but especially fic, and holy shit any fic with a ship tag, comes with an expectation that the MC will end with a happily ever after. If every word of the story is screaming that the story isn’t about that, there are still readers who will fail the reading comprehension, and miss the point. And then, when you reach the ending, and you have spent the whole story building a triangle, there’s going to be people who want you to put it in the square hole instead. 

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Don’t. 

That’s the point of this. Not some call to tear down the social expectations, or a callout for folk who like those stories.