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i love how suddenly it's the kuroken content creators that oversexualize kuroo
it's super hard to judge bc the way people consume their content is different but the portrayal of both kuroo and kenma has been changing soo much these past few years.
it's a difficult topic to talk about without offending anyone but from my perspective there are two things that annoy me: the unidimensionality in the portrayal (esp in Kenma). kenma can be shy and hold back - there are times he does not feel comfortable,but he can also be honest
to a fault - in my eyes he has never wandered into the "actually rude" side of this, but fandom exaggerations (for the sake of jokes, which i get) make him see more rude than i actually is shown to be in the canon material. same goes for kuroo - he can be suave, he is shown to be
charismatic but, guys, the way kenma thanking him left him completely flustered? his chemistry jokes? a dork. he can be both.
welp, i should have added to the kenma part: it is obvious by now that kenma is not a baby. and from what i've seen, recent portrayal seldomly uses it as a main point of kenma's characterisation (except for jokes maybe)
the second problem is what i call one of the inherent problems people have with shipping kuroken and it place into the unidimensional portrayal: kuroken, their dynamic and their look is not something that is often popular in a fandom - a lot of it starts with kenma & how he is
perceived in the fandom. different from kuroo, kenma is not one of these "hot guys" while also not being one of the characteristically pretty ones - even though we have semi-canon interactions that show us otherwise (kenma asked to model), kenma is slender, not bulky with
muscles and someone who was characterized as not particularly liking sports - in a sports anime. his introverted nature together with fandom one-dimensionality that falls into a self-reinforcing loop which in consequence enhances certain qualities of his character to a point that
it no longer fits who he is shown to be creates something that people scoff at. i am aware, i am not a huge fan of it either but that's how (especially young) fandoms work.
we are still recovering from the early portrayal of kenma and a kind of stimga that still somehow persists
we are still recovering from the early portrayal of kenma and a kind of stimga that still somehow persists
within the fandom itself. the reaction of recent years that kenma is "feral" is in same parts overexaggerated but to the different side and more embraced by people that are sick of the babyfied version of kenma. i get it.
to me it just proves that we as a fandom have not arrived at a point where we can unify the aspects of kenma we know properly. and that's okay. we'll get there, i hope. at least most creators and people i talk with have a very differentiated view on both kuroo and kenma.
guys, especially we, compared to soo many other "main ships", have so much to work with. furudate gave us interactions that differentiated their characters well - especially in terms of each other. let's use it.
also another major pet peeve i have is people using kuroken's friendship as reason not to ship them - if it's not a total rare pair, all of them are friends my guy. how come you only think they are friends when the topic of shipping them comes up huh
but that would be opening another pandora box and we're (I'm) not ready for that