But anyway Feferi, whom I really don't like. I'm not gonna say "hate", but man, I got no love for her at all. I dislike Feferi because of a certain irritating trend in hetero troll shipping, which to my view she embodies (having more or less codified it via her relationships with Eridan and Sollux). That trend is that when a guy troll and a girl troll are shipped, the girl troll will be depicted as happy/eager/perky while the guy troll will be depicted as grumpy/retreating/mopey.
There's obviously nothing wrong with that kind of relationship dynamic, but it's so RIDICULOUSLY PREVALENT in hetero troll shipping that it's really started to get on my nerves. This dynamic, though obviously not exactly the same in every case (since e.g. a happy/eager/perky Terezi is not the same thing as a happy/eager/perky Nepeta), turns up again and again and again in practically every combination of the six female trolls and six male trolls imaginable. The only real exceptions are Gamzee*, some of Tavros**, and (if we want to be generous) Aradiabot***.
Add in gay/lesbian and human-troll pairings and that mixes the paradigm up quite a bit, of course, but it's still frustrating to go through the booru saying "Ah. A hetero troll ship. The girl is clearly into it, and the guy is acting embarrassed and out of touch with his feelings. Ah. Another hetero troll ship. This girl is also clearly into it, while this guy is also acting embarrassed and out of touch with his feelings. Ah. Another hetero troll ship. This girl is most definitely into it, while the guy is acting..."
It's really Hussie's fault for skewing the original twelve trolls' personalities by gender in the first place, resulting in so many chipper girls and grouchy boys (something he would improve with the Beforans, who have at least a somewhat better mix of "up" and "down" personalities, though I'm not saying they're better-written overall). But, even so, I can't help but latch onto Feferi as the flag-bearer for this lousy trend. Would it kill the fanartists to show Sollux or Eridan cheering HER up for a change? Would it be so bad to show her even asking to be cheered up, maybe acknowledging that she has any personal unhappy feelings at all for which she can seek the emotional help of others?
* Who barely gets any hetero shipping at all, compared with the might of PBJ. Nothing wrong with that and I'm not griping about it, but using it to argue that there are very few cases where Gamzee -- definitely the smiliest male troll -- gets paired with a more demure and frowny female troll. A little bit of Kanaya and that's pretty much all.
** Some hetero pairings like Nepeta do bring out Tavros' more cheerful side, but in what's obviously his most popular hetero ship, Tavriska, it's usually the case that Vriska's manic glee totally overwhelms a confused and sullen Tavros. I know that there's some fanart depicting a more mutually happy redrom between them, but it's a minority, and posts like
post #72901 that actually reverse the dynamic are extremely thin on the ground.
*** Definitely not living Aradia though. Not in the least.