#but in this instance its with… dee n dennis.

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random vent/rant post about d*ed*nnis & inc*st shipper’s trivializations of the subject in general below the cut..

yknow the thing abt the shipping Incest Issue is not that I think ppl who ship the shit ‘condone’ that irl or want to fuck their siblings or whatever shit argument. i don’t even think that ‘no one should be allowed to talk or write about incest in general, ever’!!!! the actual problem i have is that often ppl are making something that is a source of trauma/emotional pain/a very complicated subject in general for people into a ‘ooooh look at my sweet, dirty perverted thing.. i love my Trash hehehe!!’ thing n that just is always so fucking weird to me.

people who do this often think they are uber-mature and everyone else is just too immature to understand that incest is a thing that happens and exists and the people who criticize them are just silly children who don’t have media literacy skills. and that also fucking infuriates me, it is so misleading. cuz most of the time, people who treat the incestuous pairings they fetishize as just some plaything that has no gravity or influence on the people who see this shit, are themselves the ones who are often so immature in their arguments and handling of their “trash”.

like if people could handle the subject with a certain degree of care and displayed a genuine interest in wanting to explore this subject and kind of dynamic with nuance and mindfulness, that’s one thing… but they DON’T! not in these fucking fandom spaces they don’t!!!! this is not an artistic integrity argument or a censorship argument. it is a why are you turning this issue into a fetishized thing argument! THAT is what’s so fucking off-putting and upsetting. you are not being ‘’silenced’’. cuz obviously you’ll keep posting if u want to. esp in smaller fandoms like. yeah no one’s gonna be able to ‘stop’ you, honestly at this point i don’t care enough to exert energy into ‘stopping’ anyone and think it’s a waste of time. cuz that never works, ppl only ever double down and it just ends up making it worse for anyone affected emotionally by this shit having it continually turned into ‘discourse’. i rlly do just generally try to block the tags and blogs and move on. i do try. like sometimes it feels like no one on either side really cares about anything other than proving themselves as the superior party n it gets exhausting. still, the ppl who are continually choosing to approach this subject in such a frivolous way and acting like poor, banished victims who just cant like anything in peace anymore when people get upset by subject matter (which is, again, being handled so carelessly) that can trigger trauma and high emotions or just in general gross people out-- it never ceases to confuse me. like how can you be that unaware of how you are coming off that you act so shocked when people express they are upset by what you are doing and *promoting? (*not promoting incest itself, obviously i fucking know that, but continuing to treat 'shipping’ that shit like it exists in fandom spaces as something now somehow detached from reality entirely-- on the same level of ‘harmless fun’ as most pairings-- and should be treated as such is what i mean)

like no, at a certain point you do not care about ‘protecting art’ or defending certain interpretations or whatever bullshit you want to bastardize in an attempt to create justifications for what you’ve decided to ship and make content for. you are no different than people who just want to say fucked up shit for “shock value” and don’t give two shits who gets hurt or ‘triggered’ and may even, god forbid, feel compelled to speak up about their discomfort or disgust.

like please just take a step back from the fandom bubble and realize that no, this is not always just about people trying to assert moral superiority over somebody. i mean i’m not stupid of course i know a lot of the time online it is about that. and it’s usually pretty obvious when that’s all that is happening most of the time, at least. however, sometimes it is a reaction because some deep emotional pain has been triggered for some one/people in what is supposed to be a ‘just for fun space’ (which as many other groups trivialized and oppressed even in ‘just for fun’ fandom spaces know already, is a fucking lie anyway lol.. like let’s not even kid around with that bullshit notion anymore)... just take a HUGE step back and fucking think a little bit more deeply about what is going on here, again, minus all the stupid fandom language that coats these arguments. because, if you want to engage with and create art, it is that deep! because newsflash, assholes, that’s how art works. like no one can gatekeep the consumption or creation of art, obviously, but if you actually want to engage with and create shit-- you have got to be able to think and analyze and acknowledge that things are that deep if you wanna make something or talk about it. if you don’t want to get deep, then you can’t use any of those ‘well it’s just art’ or ‘you can’t censor art just because you don’t like it!’ arguments that come along with it.

now, onto my more Sunny specific rant.. cuz this thing gets annoying to me, especially with Dee and Dennis because, yes, there are certainly jokes written into the show about the way their behavior comes off as odd or ‘incestuous’ to other people… and their lack of awareness or this hypocrisy that tends to come from dee and dennis’ judgements being presented to the audience is funny! but they’re jokes. and those jokes are not Supposed to actually be setting Dee and Dennis up as viable love interests.

They have an undeniably dysfunctional and codependent relationship due to trauma and growing up with chaotic, unpredictable, manipulative, and self-centered parents. However, one of the reasons Dee and Dennis struggle not only to have a healthy relationship with each other but with others as well-- is because that relationship they had early on was sexualized by their own father. The twins already gained such a warped perception of how relationships (especially ones between men and women) are meant to function growing up the way that they did and, again because of their parents, often had that view of themselves and how their relationships moving forward might be viewed-- over-sexualized.

Yes, they are fucked up! But they’re not in love or have any canonical desire to fuck each other. Like.. if u wanna ship incest, the McPoyles are right there and Canonically express that they are in love and care about each other in that way. So if you are so fascinated by that dynamic, why don’t you just ship them? (I have what I’d consider to be a pretty decent first guess as to what the answer is lol) The McPoyles and Reynolds are decidedly different in the fact that Dee and Dennis do not have those feelings for each other. The McPoyles projected that possibility onto Dennis in Who Got Dee Pregnant? and he got so sick he literally threw up.

At its core, it makes me sad because I can see how badly Dennis wanted to have a relationship with his sister that was close but not sexualized or romanticized by other people. Dee certainly wanted that too, once upon a time. But people in the canon just kept projecting their weird shit, and this extended into the fandom too. It makes me sad for these characters, despite how shitty and self-righteous they may be lol.

Like yeah it’s funny to watch Dee and Dennis get taken down a peg in their perceived superiority, but the show has done that from the start and continues to in ways that doesn’t involve incest?? Because that’s, again, not the nature of their relationship. It’s not the fucking point. Often the joke is that Dee and Dennis always asserted themselves as being more classy and more aspirational than Mac and Charlie, when in reality they’re just as (if not more) trashy and depraved (again.. in ways that don’t have to involve incest to get that point across lmao). And I can tell you that is objectively much better writing that proves they’re able to stretch themselves creatively into territories stronger than just shock value or gross out humor.

This is not purely about comfort as a viewer, this is also about respecting their abilities as writers to not get stuck in the same old corner of jokes as many shows like this do.

So, despite this being vent/somewhat of a rant, this is about as unemotional an approach as I can have for the subject. But really, overall, I just don’t fucking get it. I don’t get the persistence from people that it’s not that deep and that fandom in general shouldn’t be that deep. like do you actually want to be taken seriously (as many of the same people claim they do) or do you just want to be taken seriously except for when it gets you in trouble?

like trust me, i know there are plenty of Dee&Dennis shippers still out there. there’s nothing i can do about it. i’m not gonna try and handpick and decipher who is who. anyone who i know is and posts about it regularly enough to make me uncomfortable i’ve already just blocked. i do the shit they always say to do, okay? i do! but it is one of the reasons i get particularly anxious about posting about the twins because i don’t want it to ever be interpreted the way shippers will! because it doesn’t matter that i don’t think that is written into the show and can cite my reasons for why i believe it isn’t and never was, cuz people will still twist it that way if that’s what they want to see. so i just don’t fucking say the deeper shit i have to say about the twins most of the time because the possibility of people labelling it as a romantic/sexual thing with them triggers me and makes me fucking uncomfortable!! and yes, part of that is my own problem i do not blame anyone for that, ok? no matter how weirded out i am. but it just frustrates me when people act like it’s just nothing and if you just block a couple people it just leaves you alone. cuz it doesn’t! it won’t! and i know that it won’t!

cuz it’s always more fucking worth it to people to have their taboo trash and double down on it. or for people to be like ‘ew gross!’ and make themselves feel like they’re in the right n just make things worse by making the discourse more intense n causing said people with the taboo trash to double down n become more hostile n then those ‘ew gross’ people just fucking ditch the convo for the next best thing... and i know. i fucking know that.

gonna end this whole mess (since it’s gotten so disorganized by this point.. but yknow.. never said it was supposed to be a proper essay anywhere LOL) with one last Sunny gripe... i just hate hate haaate when people do the ‘well you ship macdennis, etc’ so you have no room to criticize me! like uhhh yes the fuck i can!

i do not feel superior to you, but there are very distinct differences between choosing to ship a toxic/dysfunctional relationship and choosing to ship incest (again, esp in the case of Dee n Dennis as it as a complicated aspect of their trauma as adults and the overall tragedy of their broken sibling relationship that has often just been played off as a joke by the in-universe characters, some of the actors/writers, and the fans alike) like... no it is not the same, actually! you are just being dimwitted and intentionally trying to pull a stupid semantic trick when you argue that, and i hope you are smart enough to at least admit that to yourself if nobody else.

ok.. fin.

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@keepthemacramesecret replied to your post:

tbh i think they do notice (well dee and charlie anyway, idk abt mac or frank) but just dont think its worth the trouble of bringing it up

ok honestly i do definitely agree like... in my initial post i was gonna mention as an afterthought kinda in the tags that they’ve GOT to notice on some level (or at least that it would make logical sense that dee n charlie do) but there’s just not the same textual indication that they DO notice and it’s just never discussed or confronted the way it is w/ mac so in contrast he’s just... off the hook? like mac obviously makes more unconsciously gay comments that will get some sort of reaction n thus visual acknowledgement btwn charlie n the audience and the gang will actually discuss his sexuality and in instances when mac says smth that would indicate interest in dennis or frame them as a couple it’s met w/ incredulity from dennis but like in a vice versa situation there’s not rlly anyone highlighting or pushing back against it so it kinda goes unnoticed like... in the case of the honey do list mac doesn’t question it and a straight audience wouldn’t think twice abt it, juxtaposed w/ mac’s comment abt the dog moments later and the textual acknowledgement of it. the most acknowledgement tht we get is maybe some comments/looks from dee but like. Yeah i totally would side w/ you in saying that they likely do notice it’s just that it’s interesting how it gets acknowledged/overlooked/dismissed on screen n how that differs from mac n also what that means for like.. how the audience interprets it