#rambling and cw for mentioning the fictional SA in the tags

[sunshine-and-her-ikevil-stuff]

I fear that Alfons's route will be just as emotionally taxing as Elbert's and I'll miss using my tickets in time just like I did in Elbert's route because my brain's had enough emotions and miss finishing the mission board again

[parameciam]

i'm so tired of fandom police and people that demands that i justify why i like the things i like / ship the things i ship -.-

CW: mentions of SA, CSA, ableism + long rant incoming about my own experience in fandom as an autistic person

this morning i stumbled on a post (not here) about my fav ship, saying that we should talk about a certain scene (dubcon) and that their shippers never talks about it.

i read the whole thing and ended up so fkn annoyed and spent all day thinking about why i was so mad.

it's not because someone doesn't like my fav ship, btw, i couldn't care less about other people ship preferences. i only care about my own and wish everyone else did the same so i can enjoy my "problematic" things in peace, thank u very much.

it wasn't about the dubcon part either, i know it's triggering, it's complicated, and many people won't ever ship them because of that. no one is required to ship them, or like them at all, btw. (addendum: it's a canon side ship, not fanon) and of course i'm not going to question other people's squicks and triggers, esp since i was sexually abused as a child.

and then it dawned on me that that i was mad because the post wasn't really an invitation for us shippers to share our views on them. it was an invitation for other people to be scandalized with them about shiping something like that, and since they directly mentioned the ship and the characters, i stumbled upon it.

for a moment i contemplated the possibility of actually replying and going meta over my blorbos, but decided against it because i don't have the emotional capacity to participate on discourse without fear of ending up having a meltdown.

but i kept thinking of how this kind of thing has happened all my life: the things i like, the ships i ship, the characters i love, the media i consume, and the ways i enjoy them have always been questioned (for different reasons across time). being autistic equals being perceived as wrong, broken, too much, too little, too weird (long list of misc etc) and people outright tells you that or shows it anyway, even if they think they don't lol so I'm like, extra tired of feeling excluded and/or constantly being made to feel wrong and immoral.

it's not like i don't know that some of the thinks i like/write/read etc are dark, morally wrong, unsafe irl, etc. it's just that i enjoy all that in fiction, i think it's a safe place to explore delicate issues and themes, and esp enjoy finding the nuances that the narrative wants to explore. i love imperfect victims, i love good people making wrong choices, i love the realism of gray characterization.

i don't anyone to tell me shit i already know, i have eyes, i read/watched the same novel/manga/whatever. maybe we have different interpretations, but that's it. i don't think i'm morally superior, nor do i want to be. what i do want are discussions in good faith.

maybe that's why no one mentions that scene either, because we already know how that's going to go (and it's already a small side of fandom, so why bother).

sorry for the looong ramble, i needed to get this out of my system. i don't want to tag the ship/fandom because this was mainly about my own feelings and don't want to bring hate or initiate discourse about them.

in fact, most of my thoughts and feelings about them are going to take the form of a fic relatively soon: i don't feel qualified to write meta about them 😅 but i want to explore so many things about them, and disability, and ableism, autonomy, agency, etc etc etc.