#obviously this doesn't apply if you genuinely find something triggery to watch

[cassowariess]

Been thinking about that post (which I’m too lazy to hunt for now) thats says fictional characters are not real people: they are characters that drive a narrative.

I’ve been away from the Rick and Morty fandom for a few years and I’m just getting back into it and some of the takes I see on the tag are unrelatable to me. Namely people saying things like “I’m so done with Rick because he did this awful thing.” And...I don’t get it? Like, it was immediately obvious from day one that he is a bad person.

In the very first episode he gets so drunk he builds a neutrino bomb and threatens to drop it on the city. He gets his grandson to shove megaseeds up his butt to smuggle through customs because he doesn’t want to do it himself. He’s manipulative and selfish (and fun to watch). As the narrative progresses we learn that he is a deeply traumatized man that has to learn to love people again after tremendous loss, and while learning to do that he is still an awful human being with too much power who uses that trauma as an excuse to be really shitty to other people. But, every time he does something bad I don’t think: “this character has personally wronged me.” He’s a vehicle that drives the story, not a real person. So, I dunno... it’s odd to me when people get angry about his shit behaviour.

I’m not saying I don’t relate to fictional characters. I relate to the struggles with mental health, as I was an awful person in my twenties who hurt people through my actions, whether I realized it or not. I got treatment and therapy. So I like watching Rick slowly get there while kicking and screaming. I want to see this character grow and fail and grow and fail again. R & M would be a boring show to me without that conflict.