people in happy relationships vs shipping

I've always wondered, do allos ever get passionate about shipping when they have a real person to obsess over? well, I got my answer today. I'll get to that in a bit but first I'll detail my earlier confusion.

so my mom would read so many of these shitty romance novels when I was a kid, and she'd obviously hide them from me because they probably had the filthiest shit in them, but it used to make me feel a little sad because she was so obsessed with them and my dad was kind of. ok I'll just say it because no one's gonna read this anyway but when I was younger he was sort of the worst. let alone him being romantic or wtv, their relationship was terrible even on the...can stand each other and are the bare minimal baseline of decent to one another level. subzero, below rock bottom, you get the drift. and I used to wonder if my mom read so much romance because she wanted to escape into a fantasy.

now im not saying everyone who reads romance does it to escape into a fantasy. I obviously know that now. like, I'm aro as fuck and I looooooooooove reading angsty-ass shipper bullshit. it's so bad actually. my ex-friend used to say she'd reserve one day of every month to get absolutely totally shitfaced drunk, and that's me but with binge-reading horrible fanfiction. and yeah, maybe that day was today. I may or may not have spent the entire day reading sappy cringe-as-hell byler fanfiction. and sure a lot of why I do it is I'm projecting my intense friendship angst bullshit onto them, since it's not as easy to find such deep representations of friendships with that much emotion or whatever in them. like just today I made a playlist of the feeling of falling in love with a new person AGAIN and yes I was projecting from my real life, but for me it was over falling in love platonically with a friend. like randomly being overwhelmed with just how much I love them. and I am going to add a preview because I am a fucking playlisting genius and my hilarious iconic relatable playlists need more appreciation. yes I know no one is gonna read this but I'm proud of the fucking playlist ok. every playlist I make is such a banger I should do this shit for a living.

but most of the songs I added to it were explicitly written in the context of romance. like even the description. the italicized oh is specifically a romantic trope. but I relate to it, so hard. platonically. that moment someone goes from being just a casual friend who's fun to hang out with to someone really fucking special who you love so much it's a little bit like a tidal wave you know? but that's not entirely it either. I love reading about things that have no correlation to my real life and that I literally cannot project over however obsessed I am with making everything an analogy to my stupid baka life. you know. hero x villain romances. two foot soldiers on opposite sides of the war. kinky unholy smut of toxic sapphics who can't stand each other. although I have this problem where I find it very hard to separate real life from fiction and will do basically anything for the plot. even if it's, uh. bad. the way I fully deluded myself into believing I had a crush last semester and...

I digress. 

ANYWAY. that's the other thing. there's a lot of evidence supporting this hypothesis. for one, my entire existence as the most shipping brainrot inflicted person on the planet as an aroace. secondly, the way this brainrot just completely vanished for that brief couple of weeks I convinced myself I had a crush. maybe, in my case, it's an ocd thing. I just need some weird gay obsession to physically stay sane. BUT like hear me out. my sister is the most allohet person ever, and she just. does not give a shit. about shipping. and even when she does it's in such a normal way. most allohets I know don't, actually. like in my experience people who are actually interested in having a love life rarely care about fictional idiots in pining. and it's sort of like how straight women get offended when their partners watch porn. like a weird you should be satisfied enough in this relationship to not want to escape into a fantasy thing. not saying I agree. I really, really don't. but that's a whole other discussion about fiction as escapism I don't have the time for right now. lol.

BUT but but counterargument...let me call this the jane villanueva phenomenon. and YES there is a reason I relate so hard to the loml. this bitch was sitting and writing a romance novel an hour before her wedding because she felt inspired. yes at least some of her romance novels were based off her real life, but. I saw this person on ao3 today and I COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING DKFJGHDFJKHDKFJ

you know what they say...ao3 authors (not just authors clearly) really are a different breed. the same breed as me, evidently.

so. it's weirdly comforting to know """normal""" people in relationships can't escape the brainrot either. it would be kinda. idk. lonely. being the only person who cares about ships once all my friends get into relationships...AND I KNOW THIS IS A WEIRD CONCERN. I have bigger concerns. I was just. thinking.

so yeah idrk what the point of this post was but. shipping is fun. and the thought of NOT being a shipper is weirdly scary to me. which is funny because I'm the biggest romance hater IRL. but shipping random weirdos can get you through so much. and who cares WHY it's such an important part of my life, anyway. and not just romantic shipping. it's fun. I love love. it makes me happy. does anything else matter lmao