Djinn's Lair

something that I have never pointed out before and probably has to do with my naturalization of the dynamics as such: many of the shippers of the official couples of this fandom (and some unofficial couples but undoubtedly infinitely more popular as well) understand romantic relationships and, why not, even friendship as transactional relationships where they seek to reward the person who loves the most, or loved first, or performed actions in pursuit of helping the subject of their affection (and I use this term generously because they "help" the other based on what they think the other needs and does not necessarily take into account the desires and/or true needs of the other) with their romantic/affective reciprocity. this type of understanding of human relationships reflects a perception of social interactions within a capitalist framework, where the bonds established or to be established must generate (at least and minimally) some kind of "affective profit". in short, within this dynamic, the notion of creditor and debtor is generated, where a subject carries out an action (loving despite of, seeking the salvation of, etc) and puts the other, consequently, as a debtor of the one who claims to love them. once the debt is established, it's time to seek a payment, and this almost exclusively turns out to be their affective and/or romantical reciprocity, their complete devotion, or their absolute submission (let's not forget that many of these relationships are built with at least one of these premises or the conjunction of several). furthermore, the creditor always wants to be the creditor, and therefore seeks to generate debts that are impossible to pay, either by performing multiple actions that extend the commitment of the other or by carrying out an action that is established as so a important (again, love despite of, save from, giving birth to, etc) that the debtor can never stop being in debt, so they commit to life with the other in order to "repay their generosity". hell, they bring even the most fundamentally questioned roots of patriarchy (by feminism no less!) inside this vision (and yes of course patriarchy's basis are intrinsically tied to the capitalist system but that's for another post), as usually the women are the ones put in the "debtor" position through the economic dependency generated by the patriarchal family model; yet they change the "economic" part of the equation (and sometimes not even) and replace it with emotional or psychological dependency where one owes their life to the other (literally or figuratively), in this essay i will...