#I get you're jealous and butthurt and intimidated

[raycatz]

guy complaining about the names the fandom uses in the middle of the update hype blowing YOU UPPPPP BLOWING YOU UPPPPP KABOOM

[wengoku]

Why do you hate Reaper76? From what I can tell from others, the main issue is that it's abusive (even though most fan art is either set when they were best friends, or at a time when they've already made up), it has a lot of stereotypical kinky yaoi fan art (guess what, that happens with literally EVERY gay ship. You're precious Doomfist/Reaper pairing will get the same treatment) and that its a white guy with a Hispanic guy, because apparently mixing races is bad.

 anon, lemme tell you, that i used to be the BIGGEST r76 shipper. like if you look through my blog, the VERY first post on my blog is r76. ive even written some fics for them, though i dont share my ao3 atm. i starting shipping it around the same time i got the game, aka, july of last year. i was attracted to the ship mostly because of gabriel, i’ll admit-- i interpret him as afrolatinx and as a black person, i latched onto him the same way i’ve latched onto lucio and black widow.

i hate the ship because it took until about halloween for the racists in the fandom to drive me out. 

i loved the ship SO much that i’d check the ao3 for it every single night, and that was the literal downfall. i checked it every night and so i PERSONALLY watched as more and more racist, stereotyping fics appeared, over and over-- fics that fetishized gabrel and his race, fics that made gabriel larger and meaner and scarier than jack, fics that made gabriel out to BE an abuser towards jack, or fics where gabriel was a dog that existed just to make jack happy. fics where gabriel had no characterization other than being jacks happiness or misery-- fics that portrayed jack as immediately likeable (because hes white) and fics that portrayed gabriel as immediately intimidating (because hes brown). fics that waxed poetry about jacks pale skin and cornflower blue eyes, but only mentioned gabriels looks to point out his thick thighs or massive cock. fics where gabriel straight up kidnapped jack and raped him. im not making any of these up. these are all fics i saw in the tag that distressed me, over and over again, because i was just a black kid that wanted nice content of a ship with a character i could personally relate to. 

i looked on tumblr, and lo and behold, i saw the same thing! gabriel towering over jack (when theyre the same height), gabriel being scary, gabriel being accused and abused and demonized, “sexy thighs” gabriel and nothing else, meta (i used to love reading meta-- now i cant stand overwatch meta regarding the old soldiers at all) that sympathized with jack and portrayed gabriel as a jealous demon who deserved to die and is obsessed with jack. i followed blogs, and was immediately bombarded with white washed art, and then excusing of the whitewashing. 

i was fresh out of anime fandom-- overwatch is the first gaming fandom ive ever been in and also my first fandom where there’s so many poc. i think r76 was one of my (if not the first) interracial ships where one of the characters was darker skinned. i became more and more jaded, every single time i opened ao3 or went into the tag. i know it sound silly, because its not real, but there was a time when i genuinely broke down into tears because i couldnt stand how gabriel was treated. id seen the “kinky yaoi” dynamic with mlm ships before, and this was WHOLLY magnified. 

its not just because its “a white guy with a hispanic guy”. thats not my issue at all? i used to really love jack, too? i wrote aus and rped r76 with my friends? and its not just that mixing races is bad, because a black man and an afrolatinx man is an interracial ship too? completely ignoring all of my other interracial ships?

i hate r76 because very few people could bother to treat gabriel with even ONE shred of the respect they afforded to jack. i hate it because i was literally driven away by the blatant, overreaching racism. i hate it because of all the times gabriel was “the dark man” or “the latino” in fics because you’d NEVER call jack “the pale man” or “the caucasian”. i hate it because yall motherfuckers dont know how to act.   

can i say that every r76 shipper is bad? no, of course not. but until the r76 community puts itself together and addresses the racists and harmful stereotypes that it harbors, then yeah, i fucking hate it. and no, im not gonna say, “not all r76 shippers”. this is the last time im answering an ask like this and if you wanna try to change my mind or genuinely talk to me about it, then you better PM me or message me off anon. 

and btw? i know that doomfist/reaper might end up with some bad apples, but i have more faith in a ship that was born by a majority BLACK (because yes, the first shippers i saw including myself, are black, or mostly poc) fandom because i know that we’re less likely to apply harmful disgusting stereotypes to ourselves. so if youre feeling butthurt about “doomper” and people having fun, then maybe consider doing what ive had to do for months-- suck it up.