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#my lil mini essay yahoo
girlinlavender · 2 months
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one of the most intriguing things about sapphic pairings, which, in my opinion, cements them as the best type of ship gender wise, (don’t come at me), is the dialectic parralels they often showcase. Very commonly, a narrative will queercode it’s characters by presenting them as something of a matched set, whether they be friends, enemies, rivals, etc.
This is especially and irrevocably true in sapphic relationships specifically because of how insanely close and often toxic and codependent female friendships can become, especially between repressed queer girls. The comparing yourself to them, the resentment and jealousy, the love, the possessiveness— it’s easy for those types of relationships to bridge on romantic, and that’s why queer girl “friend breakups” are so intense, and often so romantically charged. Because it’s essentially an actual breakup.
Similarly, as is often seen with two characters who are intertwined in this way, or any other, the narrative will present them as parallels to the other’s character, essentially inversions of each other, furthur proving the notion that these two people are a matched set— you cannot talk about one without also discussing the other, because their development within the storyline is entirely dependent on each other. Specifically, female relationships are known to present themselves in this way to a T; it’s what raises the extremely common question within queer women: do I want to be her, or do I want to be with her?
Take Jackieshauna, two girls so insanely connected that even their fucking funko pops had to be together, still codependent even when separated by death. Their relationship was insanely homoerotic, even without being canonical, which makes them one of the most popular ships in the entire Yellowjackets fandom.
Take Catradora, who were super duper codependent in their early days in the horde, and who’s narratives paralleled each other even right up to the very end of the series. They were also a matched set— yes, they had independent character arcs, but their traumas were so connected to each other that without the other, they would have turned out a completely different person, and very likely a worse one..
Take literally any sapphic ship, and you’ll likely see this issue presented in one way or another. This entanglement, like souls bound together, that can’t even become completely separate from each other in the midst of war, death, politics, starvation or cult activity. That’s what makes these kinds of dynamics so interesting, and ripe with motifs to discuss, like I’m doing now. To put it simply: fiction is bonkers bannanas, and girls are extremely close with one another in a way that cannot be understood by outsiders. People of any nature, gender, whatever, are shipped together because they are interesting together, and nothing is more interesting than people who cannot exist without some semblance of the person they care for most. Even if you don’t see them as romantic, you can’t deny the intensity and emotional intimacy share. The human condition is an endlessly expanding atrocity, and the depth that lies within it is easily exemplified by other people, and that, my friends, is why stories are good.
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