#non-dangan related but this is also how I feel about kazuichi and sonia even though I dont ship them together

[my-gf-is-kazuichi-soda]

Some people in the MLAATR fandom act like Sheldon is irredeemably creepy or gross or manipulative, and then uses examples of behavior that happens with all of the characters because it's an exaggerated children's cartoon.

Exhibit A:

To me, this is the same logic as saying "Jon Arbuckle is an animal abuser" because he lets Garfield drink coffee and sometimes puts him on a diet of a single lettuce leaf (I read the Jon Arbuckle hateblog for a laugh sometimes). Yes, obviously irl this would make someone an animal abuser, but in the silly world of Garfield these are just signifiers that the human reader, who might drink coffee or be on a diet that they hate, is supposed to relate to Garfield. Neither of these actually foods hurt him in the comic. Garfield eats entire trays of lasagna for crying out loud! Jim Davis even describes Garfield as being more like "a person in a cat suit" than a real cat. If we put the actions back in the context of the comic strip, Jon Arbuckle is just a pet owner who sometimes acts as a parent to a child, other times acts as Garfield's friend or roommate, and is kind of a dork but generally a good guy. Garfield and Odie's family.

Likewise, the world of MLAATR operates on cartoon/sitcom logic. Very often the characters will resort to lying, trickery, disguises, being aggressively friendly, etc. as ways to keep the plot and jokes rolling. I'm pretty sure every character has done this at some point, because of the humor potential. These are not meant to be looked at as abusive behaviors. You can usually judge how harsh the actions were based on other characters' reactions and how quick they are to forgive at the end rather than applying real-world relationship logic.

This is not to say that the writing is infallible or unable to be criticized because "it's just a kid's cartoon!" (I hate that argument, it's usually meant to silence people and that's not what I'm trying to do). Yes, cartoons can screw up in their messages, and you might be able to argue that maybe this writing style makes all of the characters bad role models for children. But if this is how you judge Sheldon, it's only fair to hold all the other characters in the same standards, including Jenny herself.

It bothers me that Sheldon gets the bad rep in the fandom because as an autistic person, especially when I was an autistic child, I related to both Jenny and Sheldon and their struggles in communicating/socializing in a world that glorifies popularity and being "normal" and hurts the weirdos to get them to conform. So it hurts on a personal level to see Sheldon get hated to such a high degree, and to hear people say Sheldon and Jenny would be an inherently unhealthy relationship, just because Sheldon can have some boundary issues and lack of social skills. I know people aren't saying this to villainize autistic traits, but that's how it can feel to me.

I could also get into how the show hinted that Jenny was at least a little curious about a relationship with Sheldon and that she might have gone for it if not for her fatal flaw in trying to seek popularity, but I'll save that for another post. This isn't meant to shame those who dont like the Jenny and Sheldon ship, but to give an alternative perspective to the whole "Sheldon is creepy!" thing I keep seeing in the fandom.