There is a topic that I've been meaning to talk about for a while, but getting into writing mode has been difficult lately. The topic is ... romance, again, although I'm going for a different angle than last time.

One day while I was thinking about names, I suddenly started to wonder what would have happened if Daniel and I had managed to actually get married instead of just planning to do so and then never getting around to it. To my own surprise, I got this strong feeling that I wouldn't have regretted it, and then I thought, "You're not making sense. Married or not, you're not together anymore. How could you not regret a marriage that failed?!" But the feeling wouldn't budge, and my thoughts kept returning to how special our relationship was, how he's my best friend now ... and how nobody even batted an eyelash when I announced that he would always be family, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say about one's ex. Evidently the unique nature of our connection is visible to other people, too. I still kind of think we were made for each other, just not in the way that we initially assumed.

Now, in Homestuck there is this alien race called trolls (yeah ... IKR) who have a much more complex idea of romance than us humans. I won't go into detail, but the gist of it is that there are four different types of romantic relationships, some of which actually appear to be platonic at first glance. One is similar to human romantic love, one is a kind of romantic hate, or rivalry (come to think of it, the "rivalmances" in Dragon Age II are a lot like this, too), the third could perhaps be compared to a romantic relationship between asexual people, and the last one - which is simultaneously the most complicated and the least interesting - is like a sexless, toned down version of the rivalry one. I'm sure you'll be relieved to find out that I only want to talk about one of these. :P

( cut for length )

So all of these things put together kind of changed my internal definition of romance forever. I never would have expected that from a silly webcomic.

I think I just started to figure out what it is that keeps me from getting properly involved in fandom. That question has been bugging me for ages because it's certainly not a lack of interest: I want to get involved because I do get pretty excited about things and having people to talk to who share the sentiment would ne neat, really! Part of the problem is obviously that I don't have much to contribute, what with never having finished a single fanfic and appearing to have lost all my icon-making skillz - but that can't be the only reason, you know? I even suspect that if I did get involved somehow, I'd be way more inspired and eventually would end up finishing a fic. Interaction can do that to you.

One thing that's definitely holding me back is that I don't have the money to immediately buy each new album/book/DVD/etc. that comes out, so I regularly have to skip a lot of posts for fear of spoilers and by the time I finally catch up, everyone else's excitement has already passed. Well, with any luck that's going to change once I have my own place.

What I just realised is that I often feel left out for an entirely different reason as well though, and it has something to do with the fact that a large part of fandom is basically about sexual attraction. We look at pictures of our favourite characters/celebrities because we find them attractive, and what was the most popular fanfiction genre again? Right. Romance. Which some only read for the porn. :P That's all nice and well, but despite being utterly addicted to romantic fluff and picture-browsing myself, I often get the impression that what goes on in my head when I do these things is very, very different from other people's thoughts. The way they talk quite frankly disturbs me most of the time. I could never join a conversation that is all about how badly you wank to fuck that person, sorry.

Speaking of which, is it actually possible to get aroused just from looking at pictures of an attractive person?? I can never tell when people are joking. Especially when I'm too busy being disturbed.

Meta discussions never apply to me, either. I don't seem to have much in common with the average fan, the average female fan, the average female fan who likes slash ... or the typical representation of any other group that I'm technically a part of. It's quite frustrating. I always get the feeling that all those people who appear to be enjoying the same thing as I am are coming at it from such a different perspective that it's not really the same thing at all. How am I supposed to communicate with them under these conditions?

For some reason I was completely unaware of this problem until just now.