Fopinions February: Love

[extrapenguin]

On the Day of Friendship, ng_moonmoth has asked me to hold a Fopinions February on love, since apparently in the rest of the world, 14.2. is known as Valentine's Day and is part of a marketing campaign to make everyone get into a romantic relationship so they can buy overpriced crap in the name of capitalism. As an alternative means of celebration, I suggest signing up for space_swap! Sign-ups close on Sunday.

Love! The thing so many people are preoccupied with, whether finding their ~soulmate~ or shipping characters in fandom. It's nice when it happens, but the emphasis on it is OTT, especially how everyone seems to focus overly much on the infatuation passion start get-together. That phase is fucking exhausting IRL; I don't want a whirlwind passionate thing, I want a crony.

Or perhaps I shouldn't concentrate too much on romantic love – after all, the word covers other types as well. It's all part of the "positive vibes" spectrum of feelings that includes friendship and such. "I enjoy this person's company." "I like this person." (With family, this can also intersect with duty and such – "Go visit gramma on her deathbed" and whatnot – but the basic feeling is hopefully liking the family members.) Love is friendship, and friendship is love, and the boundaries of feelings are arbitrary. The feelings thing is a spectrum, not a step function. It's all oxytocin anyway. Affection and warmth and enjoying the time one spends with the other person. Carving a small space of time to spend with the other person, away from the hubbub of existence. That's what love is: not grandiose declarations in public, but a private matter between two people who give a fuck about each other and are interested in each others' thoughts and lives.

IDK. I guess I'm a bit disillusioned. Falling in love is my least favorite part, so searching for people to date is fucking annoying. This set of vaguely articulated thoughts could probably be expanded into an entire book, and a separate series of posts on how this cultural obsession with romance creates shipping and the most common shipping tropes + the solipsistic shipfics where only the couple getting together matters, and they're part of a two-person cult, more than people who interact with other individuals. (Hey, I'm a fan. I think about fandom.) (I have started writing shipfic, but I realize it's mostly about people who already love each other. Hm.)

Should you be in a place that celebrates Buy Shit Day today, there might be discounts on Romance Tokens tomorrow.

Comments

[mekare]

Your thoughts on love align pretty much with my own. That's why I love Alain Botton's approach so much:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ6K_f7oSdg

[extrapenguin]

Thank you for the link! I'll have to watch it when I have more time.

[chromemuffin]

The phrase "two-person cult" is perfect. And sadly the case in many romance-y stories, fic or not. I like the journey to two people realizing they love each other....only if it takes a backseat to actual life events and is slow burn. Which is probably why I'm usually fine with those vaguely shippy/teasing borderline BL stuff that the yaoi-seeking children hate. I'd prefer two people to spend that time developing a meaningful relationship than instant love.

[extrapenguin]

Credit for the phrase goes to floating_hell!

I prefer the "nope, nothing to see here, this is totally socialist brotherhood!" approach Guardian took, where it turns into established relationship very fast. I'm also more interested in people figuring out how to make it work longterm than the "ooh immediate whirlwind passion let's bang" a lot of romance has, which doesn't contain any interesting non-romance bits (like worldbuilding or cases), and cuts out as soon as the interesting bit of the relationship starts.

[chromemuffin]

Ha, yes, that is my preference as well. Though I also like those 'we've been together for so damn long and never really named it as such, but yeah, I guess we are in a relationship' with the caveat that the parties involved not be treated as oblivious dunces who never figured out they were together.

[extrapenguin]

Drifting slowly past the infatuation zone into a quiet relationship is also nice! And I agree that treating the characters like dunces is annoying, especially if the narrative has a tee-hee attitude about it.

[anotherslashfan]

Incidentally, I just remembered how in Chinese class ages ago, I think I learned about the x types of "情". Afaicr, it went something like - 亲情，友情，爱情等等, though I vaguely feel like it was four types?

[extrapenguin]

Ooh, do they map with the Confucian Five Bonds? (Ruler to ruled, father to son, husband to wife, 哥哥 to 弟弟, between friends.) Or just family/romance/friendship/(idk loyalty or the master-apprentice relationship or something, that'd make a fitting enough fourth one)?

[krait]

Happy Cheap Chocolates Day Eve! :D

For all that I read a whole lot of love-related fanfic, it's one of those "strictly fictional entertainment" things for me, and I find the RL version annoying except when it's providing me with deep discounts on chocolate that has the wrong colour on the wrapper.

I'm definitely going to sally forth tomorrow and try to acquire some Romance Tokens of the edible (and possibly also floral) sort at bargain prices!

And then I'll enjoy them while reading a whole bunch of fanfic about people in love.

[extrapenguin]

Indeed, fic preferences and IRL preferences don't necessarily map (I'm only interested in fictional murder, for one *g*), though I do wonder whether there are trends in eg what sorts of shipfic, if any, people prefer based on real-life romance attitudes and preferences. (Beyond the "why do women like yaoi?" discussions of yore, which have undergone a resurgence lately in some circles.)

Happy Cheap Chocolates Day!