#obviously this was too much context to put in though so instead endgame AU i suppose | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mc-lukanette · 3 years

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I've seen people complain that salters 'ruined the reputation of lukanette', and turned it into nothing more than a spite ship, and I'd like to know what you think of this? Personally, I can't really say that I agree, but I also don't actively look for lukanette content unless it's from you, and since you're the biggest lukanette shipper I know, I thought you might perhaps know where this whole idea came from, or might have an opinion on it.

Firstly, aww, that’s so sweet that you go to me for your prime Lukanette content! Thank you!

As for the question itself, the way I look at it is like... good riddance?

That might not seem to make sense, but my basic point is that people who say that most likely didn’t ship Lukanette in the first place. It’s easy to bash the “sub-ship” of a show because the main one exists, so you’ll hear substandard arguments all the time like, “it’s not endgame so you shouldn’t ship it,” “you just don’t get the show,” and of course, “you just like Lukanette to spite the love square.”

Attacking the fans of something to attack a show/ship is the “easy” way out while simultaneously being the laziest. If those people want to let others dictate their opinion on a ship/show/whatever when the people who follow said thing have literally nothing to do with it in terms of how it plays in canon, that’s their problem and I’m personally glad not to have them around, y’know? Good and bad fans exist for basically everything, and allowing a side to change one’s opinion in that way isn’t the way to go.

I could easily list a bunch of examples of bad experiences I’ve seen Lukanette shippers have with love square shippers, but I don’t, and I don’t judge the love square based on my opinion of Lukanette (I also stay in my lane by not crosstagging but that’s a different topic altogether).

Yes, I don’t like the love square. Yes, I wish Lukanette were endgame instead. Yes, some of my fics will contain varying amounts of salt depending on my mood (though I keep it pretty sugary on mc-lukanette for the most part, and one of my No Context November posts even has Chat Noir being best buds with Ladybug and encouraging her relationship with Luka), and sometimes my ideas involve Adrien and Marinette breaking up in some way (whether it was on friendly terms or not is up in the air; depends on what I can get out of the idea).

All of those factors together does not mean that I ship Lukanette for the sake of spiting anyone or any ship. I just adore Lukanette and it’s obviously going to squeeze its way into whatever I write because why would I not put it into everything???

What I think happens is that people see Lukanette fics having salt about Adrien/the love square and then make a connection where there isn’t one, believing that Lukanette shippers only ship it because they’re salty about the love square.

That is flat-out not true. There are multiple Lukanette shippers who enjoy both Lukanette and the love square at the same time, then fell off of the love square when it stopped working for them.

There’s an inherent bias that comes from disliking something. Presuming these people who say “salters ruined Lukanette” never shipped it in the first place, they’d be more likely to see other people talk about how Lukanette shippers did x/y/z and then just roll their eyes like, “of course they did.” If they did ship it and then fell off, it was just a matter of influence they chose to participate in, because the one meant to curate their experience is them, and as this very lovely and polite anon points out (as they don’t know what the fuss is about with “salters ruining Lukanette” because they’re not seeing it), exposure to things one doesn’t like about a fandom won’t happen if precautionary measures are taken, and the way people absorb certain shows/ships happens to cause them to see content that gives the a particular viewpoint.

But one they see that content, it is their choice to let it seep in and change their opinion. I, for example, take measures myself (more because I want to avoid particular fics or people writing Luka in specific ways) and I basically never see anything I don’t like. On the off chance I do, it’s my fault because I didn’t take proper steps, but I’m also not going to use whatever I saw as a reason to generalize and say that everyone is like that. I just say it’s this-or-that person and I move on because I think it’s incredibly rude to see a few people (regardless of how “loud” they are and how much of a fuss they’re making) and go, “okay, it’s ruined for me.”

(Side note too that there are popular salt fics out there that happen to be Lukanette endgame, and those AUs typically have tags that can be blocked; I find it really weird that people get on the case of “salty” people - who are usually generalized for “not seeing the good in things” - for complaining/”ruining” something when they themselves are being salty at the salters).

Something I think people miss when equating Lukanette with salt is that the reason Lukanette is often endgame in salt fics is that Luka makes Marinette happy; he is her “light in the darkness,” as it were, and apologized the moment he thought he’d offended her. Salt fics touch on the fact that Marinette gets hammered a lot by the show, but Luka doesn’t have that negative effect on her, being so far removed from the overwhelming dumpster fire that gets thrown at Marinette that he can just be the source of comfort that she needs.

Calling Lukanette a “spite ship” is also laughable when Lukanette shippers that I’ve known/seen have perfectly understandable reasons for shipping it, and that’s not what a spite ship entails. Salters didn’t “turn” Lukanette into anything, and suggesting such things feels more like a false attack to scare those people into stopping whatever they’re doing just because the person “attacking” personally dislikes it.

I can write Lukanette whether I’m salting about Adrien or not, regardless of if he’s there, and any ship I give to Adrien is not to keep him away from Marinette; I ship ships because I think the characters making up that ship have a genuinely good connection.

Could there be a discussion of why whatever% of salt fics end in Lukanette endgame? Of course, and maybe it really does come down to the fact that Lukanette shippers happen to see the show in a different/more critical way and want to get their frustrations out by writing fanfiction that flips the treatment of Marinette on its head.

But... So what?

Fact of the matter is, Lukanette is a tiny minority of the fandom (if you go by AO3 statistics, there are like 1000 Lukanette fics - excluding the love square tag - and 20000 love square fics; if you go by the amount of people following the tags on Tumblr, Lukanette is a lot closer, but still), and I think it’s really silly to say it’s ruined because x amount of people (who definitely do not represent the entire Lukanette fandom; no one does) decided to make it endgame in a salt fic or said somewhere that they felt it was better than the love square.

#((I also think the term 'saltfic' in general is a bit overencompassing but that's just me.))#type: opinion

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