i love the lack of romance in hfjone bcuz not only are none of the main characters protrayed as being involved in any romance or being interested in romantic relationships but NOTHING in the entire show implies that ANY characters are interested in romantic relationships or that ROMANCE AS A CONCEPT EVEN EXISTS IN THEIR WORLD its so funny. like yeah none of the characters at all in the ENTIRE show are in a romantic relationship or shown experiencing romantic attraction but it isn't even implied that romantic relationships are a thing in their world. bryce's mom is the only family member mentioned by his sister and while Charlie has a mom his alleged dad is NEVER mentioned even as a baby. the closest we get is that in a small clip of taylor's info page on airy's computer we see that her parents are divorced but thats it for the entire series. we dont even know if these mfs produce asexually or not THEY MIGHT. Most aromantic world ever created im kinda obsessed. no lgbtq characters but no straight characters either baby!!!

I think the reason I see a little less potential for any mh gen 3 ships w the guy characters is bc they're just.. not given much screen time?? like. Clankie (neither of them are guys and both characters get enough screen time on their own) is probably the ship that makes most sense in canon even if other ships also do?? Like. that tends to be why the ships I think have more build up happen to be nblw or wlw???

I think Like. Gil had literally hardly any screentime without Lagoona even if they both seem into each other and communicate with each other. And I haven't even shipped any mlm ships yet bc .. the guy characters hardly interact w each other as much as they do w the nonbinary and girl characters.

Clawd had more screentime than him, but I think he and Draculaura haven't had much interaction outside of like two episodes, and I feel the show focuses mostly on him being from Beheme and being Clawdeen's brother most of the time. I've heard other ppl say in concepts he was supposed to be an inventor and I feel that his canon characterisation isn't as fully fledged as it could have been.

I do still ship Dracugoona but. tbh I don't think they had as many moments after witch hitch to be honest. But I do ship it.

Clankie feels like the ship with the most moments. They seem consistently interested in each other and even if recent episodes don't have many moments the finale is literally mainly about Clankie so. It feels like I don't have to detail this one because everyone knows how canon has hinted at it basically.

I like Lagoona x Gil, and their interactions are cute but I think maybe we could use more screen time for Gil to actually like, know something about him other than a couple of hobbies he has. I don't think a ship has to be slow burn to make sense because romance just works differently for different ppl even irl!! Its not unrealistic for ppl irl to date without knowing each other for like months or years lol... so Idk why thats unrealistic in a fictional show anyway. I think similarly about Clawdulaura but the episode with the dancing and the one where the talismans go missing did make me ship them.

For most of the characters I don't really like easily ship them if theres no hints in canon but yeah. Like Im not in a rush to ship every character with someone, and Im arospec allosexual, and hc some of them as arospec and/or maybe just not wanting to date at the moment. I should also probably add that Im friendship repulsed and familial repulsed (atertiary also) so I'm not very invested in the friendships and family in the show. I think I mainly prefer to analyse the events and characters on their own and sometimes ships.

In the movies, after the second movie, I kind of ship Toralei and Clawdeen and feel they had a bit more chemistry at the end than whatever was going on with Clawdeuce.

I don't really care for claiming characters "are better as friends" or shipping them platonically or queerplatonically bc that repulses me and Im already just p much ignoring the stuff in the show that repulses me lol. (Also I know I could just.. not watch the show then, but its extremely hard to find media without friendship as a plato-repulsed aplatonic, and I like cartoons.) I'm more in the fandom for the world building and the events of the show, and characters, and a bit for shipping but the shipping wasn't really there until I saw the potential of Clankie tbh.

i really like how you gush over the prevalance of romance in ML. I hate how people say thats a negative in how the show focuses "too much on romance and not on the agreste plot", or that the ships are taking over the plot. like fam, its suppose to be having such a huge seat at the front

Thank you for the message honeybun and yes ML is about emotions and the platonic and romantic love between its characters and it's beautiful and we love to see it!!!!

The way self-proclaimed feminists will rag on ML being so focused on the cute shoujo romance as being "unfeminist," as if romance enjoyed by teenage girls isn't one of the things that grownass men love to ridicule more than anything else, is one of the most tragically hilarious bits of irony about ML "critics." Like yes you're sooo right girl, turn ML in to some grimdark hbo bullshit that men would take more seriously instead of a "silly teenage girls cartoon," how very feminist 😶

Nowadays I often purposefully make a point of bringing up the fact that I love the romance genre/kdramas/shoujo/etc. in conversations with men as a sort of test and guess what? 10 out of 10 times the immediate reflexive action is to scoff and be like "seriously?" and make fun of how stupid or cringe that is. Why is that? Why was the conversation totally normal and fun when we were talking about whatever stupid bloody shounen action or sports anime that they liked, but I bring up "girly" anime and suddenly its so stupid and cringe? Luckily I went in to those interactions expecting that reaction and have a talent for making men feel stupid so they backtrack real fast but I feel bad for any girl they might've subjected to the same bullshit who was made to feel stupid and ashamed of her interests. And when men DO like any of that "cringe" girly/romance stuff?? They feel the need to overexplain or be defensive or make excuses about it. This is just the widespread norm.

And ML "critics" have a bad habit of conflating their personal tastes with objective criticism. You don't care for shipping and romance? Fine, you do you. But ML is ABOUT the love story, so do yourself a favor and stop watching the show if you’re just going to keep acting like that fact is a flaw in and of itself. This is what happens when they're only used to a certain type of popular media, i.e. media that is approved by said adult men. Shoujo and similar types of Power of Love girl-oriented media were always niche and no one knew or cared about them outside of the specific target demographic because girls would gladly watch "boys' shows" but god forbid a boy ever touches a "girls show." Hell, that’s literally why Tangled had to be called “Tangled” rather than “Rapunzel” so they could get boys to watch without it being dismissed as a “girly princess movie.” Same with Miraculous technically officially being called “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir” instead of “Miraculous Ladybug,” even though the latter name is what was on all the concept material, because boys and girls are all down to watch something like Spider-Man but boys aren’t likely to watch a superhero cartoon titled after a girl hero unless the creators put the male hero in the title as well to prevent it from being labelled as a “girl’s show.”  ML is ABOUT the main ship and people don't know how to deal with that, they're not used to romance being anything other than a C or D or Z plot in something that's not branded as a romance novel or "chick flick"

If you're so interested in the Agreste plot and care less about shipping go watch Sam Raimi's Spider-Man for Harry Osborn or whatever. Oh speaking of which, for the people who whine about caring more about the Agreste plot over the angst it introduces to Marinette & Adrien’s relationship and how Marinette is being “forced” in to a story that’s “not about her”/”girlbossing her way in to the Agreste plot” and say Adrien should be the protag and how he’s “””clearly written more like a main character than Marinette is””” etc. etc.: So this character, Harry Osborn, the “red bug hero’s best friend who has a dead mother named Emily and a rich asshole mentally unstable supervillain father whom he doesn’t know is a supervillain and whom he wishes he got love and approval of,” who Adrien’s story was very unsubtly based off of? Not only was he not the protagonist or even a love interest, he dies in every version of the story! And even this story, which was not a love story and was in a superhero action series aimed at boys, put the majority of its focus on how the identity reveal of the rich supervillain father affected and put a strain on the best friendship/platonic love between his son and the red bug hero lmao.

It's almost like relationships and platonic and romantic love are deeply human experiences and thus interesting and moving to explore in stories and that maybe focusing on love and character relationships in a story isn't a bad or shallow thing 🤪