I Love Books Where The Majority Of The Story Is Just Group Bonding.

I love books where the majority of the story is just group bonding.

like; stargazing, driving around, laughing over pizza, burying a nightmare creature, baking pie, building a cardboard town, cleaning out a room, murdering your Latin teacher, solving puzzles, going to church, telling stories, flying a toy plane, sacrificing yourself to the forest while your friends look on in horror, playing chess, watching trashy tv shows…

i'm seeing a lot of my mutuals are deficient in forehead kisses 😞

therefore, rb this to give all your mutuals a forehead kiss :)

Platonic Love In Fiction

Often in books, platonic love is pushed aside and made secondary to romantic love (as a result of an extremely allonormative world). Platonic love should not be pushed aside; no matter whether your character is alloromantic or aromantic, platonic love is still extremely important. As writers, we should be careful not to push platonic love to the backburner. 

First off, let’s get this straight. Platonic love is not less than romantic love. To me, platonic love is actually more important, but that’s not the point of this essay. Maybe that’s the point of this essay, but we’re going to ignore that right now.  

This is especially a trend in YA fiction, but not exclusive to YA. Platonic love is pushed aside for romantic love. We all know the trend. A character has friends (maybe) until the love interest is introduced and then that’s all that matters. What about the friends? They’re important too. But after the introduction of the love interest they fade into the background until we wonder hey, what happened to those guys? 

In our books, we need to make it clear that platonic love is important. Don’t fall prey to the disappearing friend act. If you’re going to write a romance, make it clear that your character’s friendships are just as important, even if it’s a different sort of important. It’s okay for a character to prioritize one sort of relationship—someone might prioritize their family over their friends, their friends over their family, or their lover over their friends or family—that’s okay, as long as it’s clear that all of these relationships have some level of importance to the character and aren’t completely forgotten because of a romantic relationship. As someone who writes a lot of romance and occasionally writes romance-centric stories, I always make sure to prioritize platonic relationships. 

While we need platonic relationships to be important, we also need platonic relationships that are more important. What I mean is that we need platonic relationships prioritized over romantic relationships, the same way romantic relationships can be prioritized over platonic relationships. For some people, platonic relationships are the more important relationships, whether that person is alloromantic or aromantic or somewhere in between. 

Romantic relationships are not the only type of relationships. Platonic relationships are not less than romantic relationships. We need platonic relationships that are just as important as romantic ones, platonic relationships that are just as strong, just as intense, just as prioritized. We need to see unbreakable friendships in fiction; we need to see best friends who would do anything for each other, who don’t forget each other the moment one gets a romantic partner. We need to see friends whose love for each other is just as strong as romantic love. We need to see queerplatonic partners and relationships that don’t quite fit the bounds of romantic or platonic.

What we need is variation. There is no one type of relationship that is the most important. There is no one type of love that is superior. We need to write about the complexities of love and romantic and friendship and make it clear that one is not better or more important or stronger than the other. We need to break through the idea that romantic love is the only type of love, and we can do that through awareness, being conscious of these biases we sometimes unintentionally hold. Let go of the idea of romantic love being highest on the pyramid—there shouldn’t be a hierarchy at all! All love is equal, and we need to make that clear in our writing. No more treating romantic love as better or more important. All love is equal.

Hey can I ask where you got the jars in your gay cranes post?

just ikea! i had someone pick them up for me

rajtan spice jars

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Every “i” is replaced by “iii”  Every “e” is replaced by “c” Every “o” & “a” is replaced by “x” Add “isms” to the end of it

Me introducing characters as “Look at my dorks! look at them!”