Thoughts on Found Family
On the one hand I think it's unfair to assume people who write found family don't know there's other kinds of family/friendship. (Liz didn't do this but one of the commenters did) They generally just enjoy stories of unrelated people without many other connections forming a close interconnected bond, and including extended families wouldn't generally fit.
I mean I love the fictional polyamorous romance equivalent: 3 or more people who all love each other but don't date anyone outside the group. But irl I'm in a polycule with like 7 other people, all in distinct couples, all way more likely to date new people from outside than anyone within. And while I don't think there's anything wrong with closed triads etc, I'm well aware that they're rare in real life poly circles, are often massive sources of drama, and the idea of being in one myself sounds horrifying. I have never really written the kind of polyamory I've actually experienced, because it doesn't fit as neatly into the kind of fiction I like to write. I've had some interesting discussions about this with
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moonvoice, who is dating me and has been poly for years, and is also a professional romance writer who usually prefers writing and reading intensely committed couples.Like we have a lot of conversations in fandom about depiction versus endorsement, but it's not just a matter of Kinks vs Squicks/Triggers. Personal experience, personal real life preference, what you read, and what you write are four different things that interact in complicated ways. And it's a bad idea to jump straight from "this trope is very common and feels irritatingly unrealistic to me" to "all these writers mustn't understand how the real world works".
On the other hand...GOD found family stories creep me out sometimes. And the poly equivalent can be even worse. For me the problem is often this idea that Real Love Means Not Having Emotional(/Sexual/Romantic) boundaries. Twice I've been recced Sweet Queer Poly Games that turned out to have the protagonist overtly judged by the narrative if they didn't want to have sex with ALL their friends/metamours D:
Although extended family stories can be exactly as claustrophically close, see Clan Mitchell, where the authors got very upset at the idea that anyone, in-universe or out, might find the family creepy.
Not that there's anything wrong with liking super close relationships. Sometimes I come across people bemoaning the ubiquity of romantic happily-ever-afters in fiction when they yearn for a variety of endings better reflecting real life, and I simultaneously acknowledge their point and continue to love romantic happily-ever-afters myself (except in music, where I love break-up songs) To those people, I am the conventional-minded dumbass into creepy, unrealistic fluff. So I am mostly happy to let lovers of found family stories have their fun.
But sometimes it creeps me out.
(I don't find it boring, so much, but that's a valid reaction, and what Liz was actually talking about)
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Right!