Do you find your male/male ships look different or have different dynamics than female/male, and if so, is that something about your tastes or just a lack of equivalent relationships. (i.e. there aren't any Loki/Tony esque relationships being written with a woman in either role).
I definitely look for different things in slash and het ships. There are some common trends, like chemistry, enemyshipping, snark, etc, but I've noticed fairly dramatic differences. Sif/Loki and Tony/Loki are the easiest sampling to see it (both enemyships, same romantic interest, etc). My view of Sif/Loki is two people who used to be friends and had a huge falling out. When there's a threat being made, I almost exclusively keep it on Sif's side. It's about people working through serious obstacles to find something that used to be there that may or may not still exist. I think safety comes into play strongly for me when I ship het, which is sometimes a hard thing to account for with something like Sif/Loki. Basically, with het, I tend to look for relationships that are basically healthy or could be healthy, but also have tension.
With Frostiron, there's still that sense of balance and it has similar themes, but I'm more comfortable exploring this fun, mutually-destructive-maybe-beneficial side. I feel safer exploring things like "We're sitting down to have a drink and there might be cyanide in it so lets just enjoy the drink". It's fun, and that's not to say women can't have those kinds of relationships, it's just not necessarily the kind of relationship I personally am comfortable writing women in. I don't mind putting male characters at risk. Emma/Regina has taught me that those same narrative tropes mostly apply to f/f relationships too, but even then, my emphasis is less on the threat they pose to each other and more on how beneficial their relationship could be for both of them.
It's odd and confusing. I know there are differences, but I can't quite pinpoint why that is or why I have those hangups, or if it's even a bad thing to have them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeasmymeasure
no subject
I definitely look for different things in slash and het ships. There are some common trends, like chemistry, enemyshipping, snark, etc, but I've noticed fairly dramatic differences. Sif/Loki and Tony/Loki are the easiest sampling to see it (both enemyships, same romantic interest, etc). My view of Sif/Loki is two people who used to be friends and had a huge falling out. When there's a threat being made, I almost exclusively keep it on Sif's side. It's about people working through serious obstacles to find something that used to be there that may or may not still exist. I think safety comes into play strongly for me when I ship het, which is sometimes a hard thing to account for with something like Sif/Loki. Basically, with het, I tend to look for relationships that are basically healthy or could be healthy, but also have tension.
With Frostiron, there's still that sense of balance and it has similar themes, but I'm more comfortable exploring this fun, mutually-destructive-maybe-beneficial side. I feel safer exploring things like "We're sitting down to have a drink and there might be cyanide in it so lets just enjoy the drink". It's fun, and that's not to say women can't have those kinds of relationships, it's just not necessarily the kind of relationship I personally am comfortable writing women in. I don't mind putting male characters at risk. Emma/Regina has taught me that those same narrative tropes mostly apply to f/f relationships too, but even then, my emphasis is less on the threat they pose to each other and more on how beneficial their relationship could be for both of them.
It's odd and confusing. I know there are differences, but I can't quite pinpoint why that is or why I have those hangups, or if it's even a bad thing to have them.