BlackHeart Biohazards

I’m in the same boat as previous aroace fandom anon. I hate how people complain about “instalove” or “rushed romances” but when characters START OUT as FRIENDS people insist that they MUST remain platonic because they said in like episode 2 they weren’t into each other and act betrayed when they do end up together. Also like, in what fucked up world are you not also FRIENDS with the person you’re in a relationship with? What I’m personally frustrated with seeing is relationships in fiction where one person is a fully fleshed-out, layered, dynamic character, and their s/o is an empty one-dimensional shell who only acts as a shiny accessory, instead of TWO fully fleshed-out dynamic characters who compliment each others’ roles in the story and both work to propel each others’ stories forward. People seem to think that by shipping two full-fledged characters one will get ‘demoted’ down to a shiny accessory. Especially in genre fiction which (stereotypically, but perhaps not actually) skews towards cishet men, who still have lingering “eww romance is boring and stinky and i don’t want it in my cool shooty pew pew sci fi” and only see a relationship in terms of arm candy / status symbol