#immoral characters

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

"You and me, Ethan. Together we go save Rose, and then we can grind Miranda into paste!"

[canisalbus]

✦ Cockroach ✦

[idolomantises]

Rewatching Adventure Time, I can't help but think so much Princess Bubblegum discourse would be non-existent if people actually watched the show to completion instead of randomly hyperfocusing on some of PB's bad deeds.

There's a very bizarre and commonly held belief that Princess Bubblegum did terrible things and got away with it, that nobody held her accountable. When the show makes a point, repeatedly, that Princess Bubblegum is well meaning but deeply flawed, and to some characters, straight up evil.

I see fans point to "The Cooler" a lot as proof that PB is an irredeemable character, and while it is her worst act in the entire show.... I think people forgot that that was the point. Near the end of the episode she stops spying on people in Ooo because it was an invasion of privacy. In another episode she's called out for exploiting some aliens and lets them go. She feels ashamed that her own people are terrified of her. She loses her entire kingdom, and realizes she needs to get her shit together.

I'm pretty critical of shows that are way too lenient on flawed female characters but Princess Bubblegum isn't one of them. She's awesome, and heavily misunderstood.

[fishareglorious]

kakania numero uno reverse 1999 character on the fact she makes a dig on the sex life of the guy she was dueling with at the moment. while also somewhat kinda maybe implying she fucked his wife

[puppyeared]

you are umasou

[cerealforkart]

Finally got around to the s1 icon batch (did you know these guys are all transparent and super easy to edit onto flags if you need a pride icon?)

1 | 2 | 3

[skallyeen]

GLaDOS's insults are interesting. Because they're so clearly prejudiced, right? She's making fun of Chell for being fat and adopted. These are scummy things to make fun of someone for, and things that would realistically be punching bags for prejudiced people interacting with this character.

But I don't think GLaDOS actually holds the sentiments she's expressing. Rather, they're a means to an end.

I get this mostly from her lines in co-op on the subject:

"Did you know humans frown on weight variances? If you want to upset a human, just say their weight variance is above or below the norm."

She calls Chell fat not because she thinks she's fat or that she personally finds anything wrong with weight variances, but because she knows calling humans fat makes them feel bad, and she's bitter about being killed and wants to make Chell feel bad.

Same goes with her being adopted. As soon as it doesn't emotionally or pragmatically benefit GLaDOS to make fun of Chell for being fat or adopted, she actively refutes Wheatley's attempt at bullying her for these things:

"And...? What, exactly, is wrong with being adopted?" "Also: Look at her, you moron. She's not fat."

She walks back her previous derogatory assertions as if they don't mean anything to her, because they don't. She never believed them in the first place.

She treats Rattmann's schizophrenia much the same way. She uses it to try and manipulate him, to make him doubt himself enough to come out of hiding where she can kill him, the same way she tries to make Chell doubt herself and turn back when she's escaping the facility back in Portal 1. The ableism she expresses is not a genuinely held belief, but a means to an end that she has no qualms about using.

Whether that makes it better or worse, I have no idea! I'd say worse on account of the intention to cause doubt or hurt to the target. But it's a very unique combination of values, isn't it? You're much more used to seeing the inverse: people being insulting, with no actual malicious intent, as a result of unchecked biases. Like, for instance, friendly little Wheatley unintentionally being super condescending about Chell's brain damage and muteness.

[cupids-art-corner]

Here’s my take on season 1 and 2 characters!

[thermodynamic-comedian]

tim and elias both jokingly call each other "bad aroallo representation" for very diffirent reasons, and it makes everybody else just a little bit uncomfortable because they don't know how to react non-offensively.

[greensaplinggrace]

“Character A didn’t love Character B because they hurt them” discourse is truly terrible because it assigns a moral value to love that simply does not exist. love doesn’t actually mean anything about someone’s character. it doesn’t make someone’s actions toward another any better or any worse, it doesn’t prevent atrocities, and it doesn’t prevent abuse.

love is a worthless emotion when it comes to morals because it simply holds no bearing on them. true love doesn’t exist. there is no better or more pure version of love. in the end love doesn’t mean anything. it’s a non-emotion. it’s the child of passion and affection and dedication. doing something bad doesn’t preclude a feeling of love, because a lack of love isn’t a requirement for immoral actions, and morality isn’t a requirement for feeling love.

[emiko-matsui]

guys i love bill seacaster so much and he's one of my favourite characters! i don't really care that he was a bad father to fabian because, and i know this will come as a shock to a lot of you, he's fictional

[the-sage-libriomancer]

Shigure's relationship with Kyo drives me crazy. he doesn't hate Kyo in the slightest - in fact, he pities Kyo, and not in the condescending "oh you poor little boy, cursed to be a horrible, disgusting monster" sort of way that everyone else does. Shigure pities Kyo for the reason he should be pitied: he's just a kid caught up in a system so inhumane it can't possibly be survived without some seriously unhealthy coping mechanisms.

and it drives me crazy because - listen, Shigure is the only zodiac member who's emotionally aware enough to see the other zodiac members as exactly what they are. he knows Yuki is a severely traumatized kid who projects all of his self-hatred on a single convenient target. he knows Akito is really a scared little girl with a raging god complex (literally) and no concept of a healthy relationship. and he knows Kyo is a regular-ass human being who doesn't deserve to be locked up for the rest of his life just because some arbitrary system says so. he KNOWS it's stupid. he KNOWS it's ridiculous and unfair. and he has to share a house with Kyo knowing that Kyo is living with a sword over his head, hating himself and hating others in perfect tandem because he has no other way of coping with the insane amounts of negativity he's had to deal with his entire life.

but the thing about Shigure is that he KNOWS all of this, and the same time he doesn't really CARE. he feels sorry for Kyo, but an apathetic sort of pity, a disinterested "this is how it is. such a shame." sort of pity. in some ways he's worse than the other zodiacs because he DOES see Kyo as a person, someone he likes being around even, but he still considers Kyo below his attention because all his focus is on Akito and breaking the curse. and sure, once the curse is broken Kyo will theoretically be set free with the rest of them, but that's more of a coincidental side effect than anything. despite being in a much more dangerous and precarious mental space AND comfortably in Shigure's reach, Kyo is about as much a priority for Shigure as Ritsu or Momiji.

and it drives me CRAZY because i think Shigure does start actively caring about Kyo as the series goes on, but it's hard to tell when that happens and to what extent. when Kazuma told Shigure he planned to reveal Kyo's true form and Shigure said he was going too far - whose sake was it for? was Shigure trying to protect Kyo, who would be hideously traumatized/emotionally scarred by such a cruel betrayal? was he trying to protect Kyo and Tohru's relationship, which was still formulating and might, under such severe testing, ultimately end up damaged beyond repair? was he only trying to protect Tohru, who wasn't ready to be burdened by such a horrible aspect of the curse so soon, or perhaps simply didn't deserve it? or was it all for the sake of himself, trying to protect his still-forming plans of using Tohru's positive effect on the Sohmas to break the curse?

Shigure cares about Kyo, but they're not close and Kyo clearly isn't a priority. he treats Kyo like a person - offering him genuine advice, teasing him like he teases anyone else, even speaking up on his behalf once or twice - and yet he's too entrenched in the long game to spare much active interest in Kyo. for a very long time, he doesn't care about Kyo the way he cares about Yuki or Tohru, and it's never made clear when exactly that changed. and the thing that gets me about this whole situation is that right from the start, Shigure is in a position where he can meet Kyo at his level - as equals, just one human being to another - but he doesn't, because Shigure is a chessmaster, Shigure is someone who observes and calculates, Shigure never steps in unless one of his chess pieces makes a wrong move and he absolutely has to.

it drives me crazy. Shigure drives me crazy. this series drives me so so crazy.

[bougiebutchbinch]

Im sorry but what about pro-ship? ...You would also cheer people who create it?

And by pro-ship i mean incest, pedophilia, rape, abuse and glorifying all of these things.

I just want to know, no vitriol, no hate.

Okay, so, this is a MASSIVE topic and my thoughts are complex. So, just for the purpose of answering this ask, I'm gonna focus on the biggy here - fictional depictions of pedophilia.

Under a cut because this got long!

I don't wanna read anything that glorifies fictional child sexual abuse in a completely played-straight way. That's a big ol' nope.

But there is a world of difference between depiction and glorification. And I don't think people writing about a horrific situation have to constantly shove it down your throat that Pedophilia Is Bad? This sort of thinking leads to incredibly cringey moralistic fiction that is, frankly, dull.

I love dark fiction! I love gothic novels, and horror, which include rape and incest and abuse and child sexual abuse and all sorts - not all of which is demonised! Some of which is wholeheartedly glorified in order to disgust you!

Some content is meant to disturb you and gross you out and make you look at your own internal 'ick' reactions! Or it's designed to give you the 'fascinated horror' people often get from looking at a car crash with multiple fatalities. That sense of intrigue when faced with taboos is a natural part of the human experience. So long as it is only engaged with in a fictional setting, it's a helluva lot less harmful than rubbernecking out the window of your car at a crash site and causing another accident.

Playing with people's disgust can be very interesting and fun, from a writerly perspective! You can create all sorts of really disturbing horror for the precise purpose of making your audience uncomfortable, and no one is actually being hurt!

Art isn't just about happy emotions, y'know? Lolita isn't pro-child-sexual-abuse despite being written from the perspective of a pedophile, and I'd wager that very, very few people who paid to watch The Human Centipede actually have a scat fetish. They're drawn in by their disgust and revulsion - like many people are to darkfic!

Now, if someone is legitimately creating content that seems to be glorifying fictional child sexual abuse, I won't interact with them for personal trigger reasons. But at the end of the day.... I don't know their story? I don't know why they're doing that.

What I know is: when I went through the worst, most traumatic experiences in my life (which, no, I will not be discussing further x) reading about the same horrible stuff happening to my blorbos legit helped. And not just the stuff where it was depicted realistically, as a horrible traumatic experience, but the stuff where it was 'glorified' too, because it made me feel less alone and awful for having lived in that situation and for having told myself it was normal and healthy.

When you're in a situation like that, sometimes you legitimately cannot tell you are in deep shit. Fics that try to point out that you are in deep shit, invariably feel like they're preaching. A balance of fics that try to point out that, y'know, Abuse And Pedophilia Are Bad - delivered alongside fics that depict that sort of relationshp as ay-okay, actually helped me come to terms with some of the shit in my life. Reading both sorts of fic together, it didn't feel like I was being constantly told I was a Victim.

I think, at the end of the day, fiction affects reality. Just look at propaganda and the affects of white supremacy and homophobia on Western Canon! But it's not a 1:1 impact.

It's more important to encourage readers to use critical thinking when engaging with fiction, than it is to harass writers who have created content that disgusts you.

You don't know why they're creating that content, and you don't know how many people it's helped - and, so long as it's properly tagged, people who need to avoid that content due to triggers can do so!

Obligatory: if someone uses a fic with an underage pairing to groom someone, that is incredibly fucked up and disgusting. But literally anything can be used to groom kids, sadly. You could point at literally anything, and at some point, it will have been used to further a child's horrific and very real abuse.

Overall, if you actually give a shit about protecting kids, I think there are far more important things to focus on. Such as:

Educating communities about how the vast majority of child sexual abuse comes from close family friends and family members, not strangers sending kids fanfic on the internet.

Educating communities about how the word 'pedophile' has been purposefully corrupted by right wingers to demonize completely innocent queer people because think of the children. This isn't to say there isn't a very real problem with child sexual exploitation & abuse, but we should perhaps be a little wary about throwing around a word grounded in serious reality to refer to fictional scenarios, and enforcing the very Right-Wing idea that 'thinking about [x] act is the same as doing [x] act'.

Focusing on children themselves. We should support good sex & relationship education, so children know their bodies and understand appropriate cultural norms. We should educate children about their rights, and give children broader community support structures so that they feel empowered to disclose abuse. Offering time or money to shelters is a great way to actually support survivors.

Ensuring there are safe and free refuges for children who are being abused IRL, places where they can stay away from family & other potential abusers - i.e., public libraries, community centres, etc. - or at least know there are other witnesses. Volunteering at your local library and donating can genuinely make a difference to abused kids - and all kids in general!

Dismantling cultures of silence around abuse in your personal community. Do not just tell the women in the group to avoid Joe because he has wandering hands. Tell Joe that his behaviour is inappropriate and will no longer be tolerated.

TL;DR - personally, please keep any/all sexual content involving fictional underage people FAR away from me, and do not send me any rape or abuse scenarios (unless we're brainstorming whump as friends, in which case, you can just gimme a warning).

But I am also against harassing artists and creators unless they are harming real children in measurable ways.

[cryptidlark]

why are there so many people on here who go “I love villains! as long they have no depth, no sympathetic traits, no ethical nuance whatsoever, no tragic or otherwise complex backstory to outline their motives, and the narrative/author’s voice declares them to have no hope of redemption and kills them off for their sins against humanity”

[dilfsonic]

Wigging out over Mobian/human ships in this fandom is particularly hilarious when a) sonic has a canon attraction to humans and b) you absorb literally any fantasy series with a multi species cast. It’s like throwing a fit over Rauru and Sonia in TotK LMAO.

[bao-dur]

they''ll be're putting my inquisitor in veilguard and expect me not to want to romance him lmao.... whimper............