#so yeah yeah again I'm jjust coming back to respect your neighbour u kno

[helenhuntingdon]

rayblayblay replied to your post “This isn’t an attack on anyone, but an observation, but it’s...”

I think back in the early half of 2016 it was pretty commonly accepted, and people saw that sl as his redemption, but since then those members of the fandom have largely disappeared and been replaced w/ ppl who joined post-ssw and imo bypassed the gravity of 2015 on their binges. so its easy for them to brush off his worst behavior & make excuses for it (or pretend it didnt happen altogether) .. and thats where u get the current shipper consensus

Yeah, I can’t keep track of dates at all (me? a History student?) but when I think of who may have expressed the belief that Robert is abusive, many of them are gone now. Though I also can’t say how much bc of my own hiatuses and inability to keep track of ppl’s url’s and url changes lmao. (I’m a mess.) 

But yeah I can understand that, the weight of those scenes are quickly forgotten if you then are going straight into watching things that may be seen as redemptive and many of the worst things he has done are in the past. Im I won’t judge it bc I haven’t watched even in ages and a lot of specific things I literally may have forgotten about entirely but it is like. Something that should be reminded as... pretty abusive. If you don’t ship them and you DID watch it then and dealt with those scenes are they happened, it makes perfect sense to see him as abusive. It also makes sense if you don’t watch it so closely as a shipper if you see that on paper, or just those scenes, it’s abusive? That should be entirely respected that people see them that way. Even as a shipper. Bc Im it used to be? 

Also it shows that people who find him cheating with Rebecca really differently have not had to watch live him do worse things and have to deal with that. Bc that’s hardly the worst thing he’s done but, w/o judging, I guess you didn’t have to watch that at the time and stress over whether you could deal w/ that or what would happen next etc etc but could just continue watching and see yourself how you still feel about them and what would happen next and you’ll have gone through that whole emotional rollercoaster in the matter of maybe hours and that in hindsight won’t have as much impact as having watched the whole sl (and fandom implosion) as it happened~

The excuses thing is the most difficult because honestly I think that IS difficult for abuse survivors for people to see others trying to make excuses for abusive behaviour, and like I said, what should matter most is respecting real people. So I find that doing something that may be really difficult for abuse survivors to see... uncomfortable. 

And also bc it’s not needed? You don’t need to excuse anything Robert has done and I have always tried to avoid that. You can just say, in a general~ way, ‘this character is problematic but I enjoy them as a character’ (honestly, I have liked characters worse than Robert before but they’re interesting characters so?). You can like a problematic character and know they are problematic and others have every right to hate them for that. You don’t need to find reasons why the things they have done are somehow okay, or not that abusive. Because honestly there is nothing wrong with liking characters who are bad people or have been bad people but are redeemed somehow - which is also a valid opinion of ‘they have been terrible but for me are redeemed’? - but making excuses for specific acts that are seen as abusive is itself quite harmful. There is no reason why emotionally abusing someone would be okay and if you have been emotionally abused that narrative can be triggering, or make you question yourself and whether you’ve really been abused or whether it was your own fault even???

so tl;dr yo ppl, you can accept that robert is someone who has done bad things and STILL like him, for whatever reason (that he’s been redeemed, that he’s not currently abusive, that you maybe you don’t even like him but you still ship the ship bc you don’t think THAT’s abusive (bc Im the most abusive things he’s done lately to me are to Rebecca?) or that you just enjoy the storyline because it’s interesting?) and not excuse specific acts, because those ARE things people may have done irl, that people in fandom may have dealt with (no not pushing someone through rotten floorboards but Idk belittling someone’s self harm or~) and they are not defensible. You just don’t NEED to do that to make yourself feel okay for liking a problematic character, you can like the character and it’s actually BETTER to admit they have done things wrong, things that have been abusive (rather than excuse them) but to just say you enjoy the character anyway or you don’t think those things are how he is now!