On Friends-To-Lovers:

I get so annoyed when people throw around the “healthy platonic relationships are so important” thing because YES THEY ARE but you don’t actually think that.

What you think is that, in this particular case, I want these two characters to stay platonic so that I can ship my ship and, simultaneously, feel morally superior. The reality is that there are multiple non-canon ships for whom this applies… but one of them happens to be queer.

Woah hold those trigger fingers!!

While this train of logic does apply to people calling queer coded relationships “besties” or, heaven forbid, “brothers”, it also applies to straight (or straight-presenting) relationships.

You do not need to write two characters as romantic interests (or *groan* enemies) for the story to be romantic. It is OKAY for those characters to form a deep, romantic and emotional bond after years of building trust and loyalty.

As a person who identifies as demisexual, I find the erasure of friends-to-lovers extremely harmful and inherently invalidating. Especially now that we are seeing screenwriters and authors being critical of the trope.

Please, sit me down and explain to me in excruciating details why these two characters - who have seen each other through their darkest periods, who have been each other’s personal cheerleaders, who have loved each other unconditionally - are not good as lovers?

“But can’t two characters just be friends anymore?!”

They certainly can and good for you for believing that characters should show genuine love for one another without having any romantic feelings. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t exist.

Listen, I never go in expecting my ship to happen and I never expect everyone to agree with it but it drives me up the wall to be invalidated purely because friendship and romantic love can’t coexist in your world. If you want to believe that platonic soulmates should be a thing (AND THEY SHOULD), you also need to understand that you cannot use that term to invalidate another’s ship when the foundations of your own (usually rival) ship are the exact same as mine.