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I think the ultimate problem with fandom is people are reducing it to a proship vs antiship problem as if it's a fucking sports team event with clear winners and losers and not actually a nuanced topic that allows for a lot of discussion to better understand human beings.
We interact with fandom to help explore the depths of our own thoughts and feelings and somehow it ends up as [ur bad cuz ur ugly].
Where are the topics of how the Ruroken author's main couple had a huge age gap which could possibly showcases some of the author's awful moralities after being caught with massive amounts of child porn? Or where are the
topics of Sesshomaru and Rin being a powerfantasy for girls and women as they watch a normal human can grow up into someone who can marry and tame the demon/vampire/monster whatever after being told forever that the only thing theyre good for is marriage
or like the topics of LGBTQ+ and fictional monsters and the difficulties of growing up feeling like an outsider that can't be accepted into society so there is sort of a familiarity to enjoying human x monster relationships
or the fact that we disregard victims of murder trauma who might have lost family members in murders but we will excuse murder and gore in fiction even tho other ships are "illegal" (murder is also illegal last i checked)
or how honestly it is kind of messed up that as soon as a person sees a relationship is adopted, it's not considered incest, why is that suddenly ok in the fictional sphere once it's an adopted relationship
or why do we not talk about the fact that so much fiction is filled with younger characters because they allow for much more exploration and freedom due to the troubling restrictions and depressing episodes within adulthood thanks to capitalism
LIKE I KNOW THESE TOPICS EXIST CUZ I HAVE READ THEM and they're very interesting and so much more thorough about our relationship with fandom and are way better at explaining to me what is/isn't healthy for me when it comes to interacting with fandom, but it gets buried down by
literally all of this pro vs anti bullshit. Like pro vs anti shit didn't teach me that I was being a dick for not content warning/tagging shit that could be traumatic for people. It was realizing that people interact differently with topics
for whatever reason, for entertainment, for therapy, for relief, for stress, to remember how to cry, to process. But somehow it became a one side vs other side battle and it makes me so mad because I find that a lot more harmful in the end.
I found it much more healthy for me to be aware of what I'm reading, to consider who is writing the source, and then make the decision on my own what is or isn't okay. Those are the lessons we should teach people. Rurouni Kenshin meant a lot to me but I can't reconnect with it
the same way due to what I know now. That's for me to decide. Likewise my obsession with gore is tied to some of my control issues and fear of death so that is a release for me, but obv I'm not stabbing ppl irl. It's complicated cuz humans are complicated and I simply wish
people would remember that. They won't as long as this weird pro vs anti shit keeps happening though.
