My wife’s favourite anime, Boku no Hero Academia (or My Hero Academia) specifically avoided relationships, because the kids (they’re all 15) were so focused on hero studies, and later, saving the world from a guy who could vapourise you just by looking at you hard enough (not quite but not far off the mark either). Because some fans were shipping the two main guys, the author got death threats because he didn’t have the main guy end up with the main girl. He released a final chapter of the manga that shows them get a little closer at the end, but the guy still didn’t want to make the series romantic. I think that satisfied the homophobes, and the fandom is still very divided on whether or not boys should be able to love one another without being killed for it… it got real toxic real fast. Yes, people were calling for the deaths of LGBTQ+ people in real life because the author of a manga series didn’t close off any ships.
Not everything has to be romantic, though. I say let people ship fictional characters as long as they aren’t bothering anyone. Gay and lesbian ships are not going away. Making characters trans isn’t going away. The omegaverse (NSFW Google search, be warned) is not going away. And nobody is calling for het(erosexual) ships to go away. (I was shipping the main guy with the frog girl. We all had a ship we loved, but none of them — not a one — ever got any wind in their sails.
Not everything has to be romantic, true enough, but not having any romance at all is a problem too. For example in your scenario, 15 year olds are teenagers going through puberty and they will be horny, continuing just because they’re dealing with life and death doesn’t stop that - people in the military certainly don’t abstain from sex.
The pitt doesn’t show much romance on screen, but it’s constantly there in the background, with pretty much every character being driven by their ongoing relationships or lack thereof.
That’s a lot of fandoms.
My wife’s favourite anime, Boku no Hero Academia (or My Hero Academia) specifically avoided relationships, because the kids (they’re all 15) were so focused on hero studies, and later, saving the world from a guy who could vapourise you just by looking at you hard enough (not quite but not far off the mark either). Because some fans were shipping the two main guys, the author got death threats because he didn’t have the main guy end up with the main girl. He released a final chapter of the manga that shows them get a little closer at the end, but the guy still didn’t want to make the series romantic. I think that satisfied the homophobes, and the fandom is still very divided on whether or not boys should be able to love one another without being killed for it… it got real toxic real fast. Yes, people were calling for the deaths of LGBTQ+ people in real life because the author of a manga series didn’t close off any ships.
Not everything has to be romantic, though. I say let people ship fictional characters as long as they aren’t bothering anyone. Gay and lesbian ships are not going away. Making characters trans isn’t going away. The omegaverse (NSFW Google search, be warned) is not going away. And nobody is calling for het(erosexual) ships to go away. (I was shipping the main guy with the frog girl. We all had a ship we loved, but none of them — not a one — ever got any wind in their sails.
Not everything has to be romantic, true enough, but not having any romance at all is a problem too. For example in your scenario, 15 year olds are teenagers going through puberty and they will be horny, continuing just because they’re dealing with life and death doesn’t stop that - people in the military certainly don’t abstain from sex.
The pitt doesn’t show much romance on screen, but it’s constantly there in the background, with pretty much every character being driven by their ongoing relationships or lack thereof.