Because ao3’s tagging system explicitly allows romantic pairings in Gen fics as long as the relationship is not the focus of the fic.
(But real talk: this comes up a lot on Tumblr and on r/ao3 and while most people know the Gen fic rules, there’s always a portion of people who don’t and get extremely frustrated when they can’t find a fic devoid of romantic relationships. Which is valid! But definitely not a reason to blame authors or their fics.
What concerns me is the growing amount of people who acknowledge ao3’s correct tagging rules and then say “well I don’t like/believe in it” and proceed to ignore the rules and continue to be upset because they don’t want it to be a rule and they think they can apply their own “beliefs” to the system and others should too.
That’s not how rules work.
If you want to change ao3, join the OTW. Run for one of their elected seats. Petition for a rule change, etc. Help wrangle the “no relationships” tags and encourage use of one others might want too.
But stop treating every relationship like it’s icky and that others are morally inferior because they’re okay with the Gen rules. You don’t make the rules, and that’s a good thing!
Also, an ao3 without relationships in gen fics? There would be so many batfamily fics disappearing because of a 200 word section buried in one chapter of 34 where Bruce and Clark interact and are presumably together!)
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