"Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect. One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division, that will release another version of yourself. This is the Substance. You are the matrix. Everything comes from you. Everything is you. This is simply a better version of yourself. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. The one and only thing not to forget: You. Are. One. You can't escape from yourself."
Cinematography Appreciation - The Substance (2024) dir. Coralie Fargeat
I just KNOW the moment Wednesday season 2 is out, and they continue this gay vibes from the novelization of season 1, people are going to be screaming about how platonic relationships are dead in media.
I am surprised to learn that as of late people have been criticizing gay shipping for “erasing” platonic relationships, that by making every platonic relationship into a gay ship we are giving the idea that every interaction is inherently romantic and influencing the children into not understanding the difference between romantic and platonic relationships.
I want to start this by saying that I do believe that a lot of people don’t understand the difference between romantic and platonic relationships, but I don’t think it comes from gay shipping, I believe this development comes from many things. One example could be how society pressures people to find a relationship which leads to desperation and purposefully blurring the lines between romance and friendship because it’s better to have someone, even if you don’t really love them romantically and just enjoy their company, than to have no one. Another example could be how society used to have a heteronormative idea of relationships, if we all believed ourselves to be straight, than it was easy to just say “if I’m a woman all the women I get along with I only see as platonic, but if I get along with a man I must see it as romantic”, but now that we are expanding on the possibility that people of all genders can be both platonically or romantically involved with anyone of any gender, we are having to face the fact that romantic and platonic feelings are not solid concepts and we have to get philosophical with what is love and what constitutes love, and most people don’t like to think about that so they keep to their heteronormativity.
This are but only 2 reasons why I believe people don’t understand platonic and romantic relationships but I haven’t heard anyone say that because they be blaming gay shipping. I’m going to say that like with anything in life this has nuance and you can argue all you want but I’m going to say that I genuinely believe a good part of the people saying this argument are homophobes.
By stating gay shipping you are ultimately also adding gay relationships, gay shipping is just a step below from queer representation. So ultimately you are making the same homophobic argument that queer relationships shouldn’t be portrayed in media because it would confuse the masses and the children. We have fallen into the idea that complicated concepts as romantic and platonic relationships should be dumbify to appeal to a larger audience of straight people.
But I can hear someone argue “but shipping is a fandom thing not a show thing”. Well someone has been living under a rock because nowadays fandoms are an extension of the show, we are social media people, we thrive in social engagement in these online communities and fandom culture has been on the fucking rise. We can’t ignore that what happens within a fandom is how people ultimately portrayed the show, it’s the reason why a lot of people don’t watch things like mha because the fandom is weird and not because the show is bad. So by criticizing gay shipping within a fandom you are ultimately criticizing it as if it was part of the show.
Which leads me to Wenclair. I believed season 2 is truly going to be coming in a horrible time to be a minority, as people have been growing more homophobic and racist as time goes on. So people are going to extremely criticize the Wenclair ship, not because it’s a toxic or immorally wrong ship, but because it’s gay. People would criticize the show because they are going to go from friends to lovers. They would argue so much about the fact Wenclair is erasing a platonic relationship that they would forget that a foundation for many straight ships and real life relationships is friendship.
I don’t think friendship in media is dying. Within my example of Wenclair there are multiple moments of true friendships in the show. A big part of the Wednesday show was Wednesday learning to have allies and people she can trust to help her, but people would ignore does messages to jump about the fact the two main girls of the show are seen as more than platonic EVEN THOUGH BOTH OF THEM HAVE SOLID FRIENDSHIPS OUTSIDE OF THE SHIP. It’s almost like the only problem is that they are both girls, because let’s be honest NO ONE is saying the same thing about straight ships, they straight ships are always super romantic and completely fine, even though we could argue that does ships also can confused people as to what is romantic and what is platonic.
And before anyone comes for me arguing that I’m taking this too far and that I’m just a sad gay who doesn’t understand we NEED same gender platonic representation (like we haven’t had enough of that in hundreds of centuries of media 😀) and that I’m just mad people criticize my gay ship. I am going to hold your hand and say. I don’t care if you hate a ship. You can tell me all you want that Xavier or Tyler are better potential partners for Wednesday and I would let you because that’s your constitutional given right, BUT if you are criticizing the ship not by personal preference but from the eyes of homophobia I am going to be mad and I’m going to be annoyed by it, because queer representation has JUST been on the rise, you can’t already be mad at it WHEN IT JUST STARTED. WATCH ANY SHOW IN ANY GENRE AND YOU WOULD FIND SAME GENDER COMPLETELY PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS, SO WHY MUST YOU BE MAD AT THE SLIGHT POSSIBILITY OF A SHOW DOING ONE, ONE!, CONTRADICTION TO THE NORM.
Shipping and canon gay relationships are not going to take away friendship, they are just helping people understand that there is not one way of being in love or one way of being involved with someone of the opposite gender, we are not stopping friendships. I would make the argument we are increasing it by making people analyze their interactions with people of even the opposite gender through the eyes of it being platonically. Because now gender is not a factor in friendships, you can be friends with anyone of any gender. Shipping shouldn’t be confusing you about it, you should think critically and analyze what you consider love.
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