The rivalries are especially frustrating to me. When it comes to shallow friendships, it's only too easy for me to invent as much backstory, motivations, fears, hobbies etc. as I need to make believable friends-to-lovers or friends with benefits stories. I can do that with pretty much any two characters I like.

Rivalries are harder. They're given motivations, but shallow ones. It's hard to get past things like a romantic rivalry, without turning it into a threesome fic, and even then it's hard. It's even harder when the dislike is a shallow cliquish junior high type thing, if you know what I mean. And yet, when two women (or girls) who are very different from each other, still clearly get along, certain parts of fandom will insist that they hate each other.

I enjoy so many different types of characters, and I am friendly with so many different types of people. Why can't that carry over into fic?