MOLTING.

THRESHOLDS: independent && selective multimuse. low / sporadic activity. featuring muses from sengoku basara, genshin impact, dragon age, sonic, final fantasy, resident evil, and more — as well as ocs. crossover and ocs encouraged. written by aries (he/him).

unpopular rpc opinions conversation pit.

i feel like people have become obsessed with not seeming ship obsessed in a way that's honestly kind of weird. i get that it's largely an overcorrection of the tendency to sideline platonic and familial relationships in favor of romantic ships, and people online love to overcorrect, but it's reached a point where it feels genuinely strange. i've seen people get shamed just for having general ship tags because someone who writes the other half of that ship might assume they'll try to forceship with them. and while i understand wanting to avoid forceshipping, implying people can't be open about ship preferences for their muse is just excessive

unpopular rpc opinions conversation pit.

i can see the merit in shipping exclusivity (even though that's a practice i dropped due to ummmm people being #weird towards me), but canon exclusivity as far as all canon interactions go as a practice i feel ends up creating, well, a pretty exclusionary environment and encourages what is essentially a popularity contest. mains are one thing. i consider my friends my "mains" whether i officially label them as such or not. but completely shutting off interaction with dupes is where i start to lose the appeal. it can be incredibly discouraging to pick up a new muse only to realize the rpc has already designated its "official" writer for that character. at that point, getting interactions can feel like pulling teeth because everyone has already settled into the established dynamic

and before any hit dogs holler, this isn't about everyone, but when i see strong exclusivity preferences paired with dupe anxiety, i tend to go the other way. it's one thing if you personally don't want to follow or be followed by dupes. that's your prerogative. it's another thing entirely when you're asking other people not to write with other canon portrayals because of your own insecurity

unpopular rpc opinions conversation pit.

unpopular rpc opinions conversation pit.

okay so i'm gonna talk about specifically age gap shipping because it's fresh on my mind and i think most of my shipping opinions are either already known or obvious. this miiiiight be a little bit dicey and there's obviously nuance here that i can't really get into but bear with me.

this is also rooted in feminist analysis and i try to avoid getting too deep into feminist thought on rp blogs because i find fandom spheres to be very weak wrt to feminism that demands anything more than libfem. i myself am a wittigian matfem however and it is important to my personal opinion on age gap ships

the trouble with "age gap" discouse (we're specifically talking about adults here fyi) is how it always sidesteps the actual machinery of power. patriarchy is never named outright, but it's staged off to the side, while the conversation pretends to unfold in a vacuum

"i think wide age gaps are problematic" is framed as if it's a general concern, but press for an example and you will almost always be immediately presented with the pairing of an older man and a younger woman. the pairing is meant to feel self - evident, as though the imbalance requires no explanation. and it only works if you don't stop to ask WHY it feels so obvious that the older man holds disproportionate power

why does he? because men, as they age, tend to accumulate wealth, authority, institutional standing, social legitimacy, etc? does that phenomenon arise naturally or are we perhaps talking around some other set of explicable social phenomena? is there some reason why, as is heavily implied by your argument, women do not accrue the aforementioned advantages as they age in the same way? without arguing that the relationship you describe either is or is not "problematic," can we examine whether we are framing correctly what exactly might be problematic about it? in this example, age is used as a convenient synecdoche that stands in for all the privilege that typically accrues to men as time goes on and as they advance within the patriarchal hierarchies woven into their personal and professional lives: a young man becomes a patriarch, a bachelor becomes head of household, an entry - level employee becomes an executive, etc. these are not neutral progressions. they are pathways structured by a system that rewards and consolidates male authority. meanwhile for women, under patriarchy, their "value" (the only form of power they are reliably permitted) diminishes with age unless offset by other forms of capital

this is illustrated even clearer in the counterexamples. when the pairing flips (an older woman with a younger man), the example never fails to somehow grow more specific. she isn't just older; she's his teacher, his babysitter, his employer. or she's explicitly wealthy while he is not. the age difference alone no longer suffices to signal the problem. it becomes obvious that once again, age is a stand - in for some other differential of power

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