someone just told me they tried to pitch a book centering a strong M/F friendship and were told the friendship angle was "too niche" and "not relatable"

::goes out into woods::
::cuts down tree::
::saws planks::
::builds table::
::sands and polishes it lovingly::
::flips it::

meanwhile I'm reading a YA GN trilogy with a M/F besties pairing and I'm just *waiting* for it to turn romantic because outside of middle grade it *always fucking does* and I'm just.........so tired

I realize I apparently live up on this soapbox but TO REPEAT:

strong fictional platonic relationships are important for aro/ace readers!

BUT

they're EQUALLY important for ANYONE WHO VALUES FRIENDSHIP

we don't outgrow this need when we graduate from MG to YA/adult for fucksake

media for kids glorifies (in a good way!) friendships between all genders, but the fucking second we're marketing to teens/adults there's love triangles and friendzones & general bullshit. friendships between genders become some kind of consolation prize for not being Chosen.

and I do not believe for one second that this doesn't have real-world consequences. fiction gives us templates for the real world & our relationships in it. telling teens/adults that their friendships aren't enough is extremely fucking destructive in so many ways.

would there be less violence against women if we hadn't all been raised to think that friendship between men and women had no value in and of itself, almost exclusively interpretable as an I'm-not-interested-in-you-as-a-person brush-off? I don't know. but I think about it a lot.

& the situation is really not helped by the fact that our cultural templates for nonromantic nonsexual physical intimacy are....fairly nonexistent. like the only reason why you would want to share personal space with someone is because you want to fuck them? begone with this shit

here are the places (in fiction/in real life) where nonromantic nonsexual physical intimacy is "acceptable" as its own valid thing that exists without being questioned

-between women BFFs
-between men if it's about war or sports
-between children
-the end

(the thing that REALLY fries my fucking bacon is that in that "between men if war or sports" scenario, look what happens when IN THE EXACT SAME SCENARIO women are involved, suddenly we're on the express train to sexual tension city. which begs the question: why the fuck)

anyway.

writers: please keep writing these stories.
readers: please keep demanding them.

you might be told there's no interest for them. (I sure was--it's why people come to tell me about theirs, years later.) but there is. and we as a society desperately fucking need them.

ok i now have multiple friends telling me that i am an idiot if i don't point this out so JUST TO POINT OUT that all my books are about platonic relationships, most of them m/f. here's one that comes out in less than a month! https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Firebreak/Nicole-Kornher-Stace/9781982142742

and just real real quick to add, for those who haven't heard me say this before: if you have written a story or book or ANYTHING that centers a strong platonic relationship, and you make me aware of it, I will boost the fuck out of it. this is an indefinite standing offer.

...this might be the first time I went on this rant without someone jumping on me immediately for being "anti-romance" because obviously that's the only option when you don't want to be bludgeoned over the head with it in every single piece of media you consume

refreshing!

I hesitate to call this progress because "progress" will be when all the new writers reaching out to me with their stories of trunking or compromising on books they didn't want to write romance into all start DMing me instead with screenshots of their zero-romance book deals

4 people have told me today that i should start my own publishing house & give homes to all these zero-romance ride-or-die friendship books that everyone else is scared to publish, and let me tell you, if i had the funds to do this i absofuckinglutely would. somebody needs to

it'd be amazing. you wrote a book about adult friends who go on adventures/do crimes/get shit done/stay friends? give it to me. a book about a super intense hopeless platonic crush? i'd publish the fuck out of it. slow-burn enemies-to-besties? send me that shit posthaste

someday

oh no

i just realized

that everyone in recent memory who replied to one of these threads with something like "what! it's easy to publish a friendship book, i did it!" were men

& almost every single person who's ever contacted me to say the opposite were women

ok what the fuck

that's. 6 years now. of people emailing & dming me asking me how i managed to publish a zero-romance friendship book, & it took me THIS LONG to realize that they were all women. being pressured to write unwanted romances into their books. women every time

i repeat what the FUCK

"but they're writing YA, right?"

who the fuck cares. they're not writing romance, they're writing sf or fantasy. and they're being told they have to add a love interest in if they want their book to sell. this happened to me as well, it's why they're here asking me.

anyway sorry this turned somehow into an all-day thread! i think about this stuff....a lot....and unfortunately it doesn't give me less reason to be angry as time goes by