Whenever a shipper [of pedophilia/abuse] says “it’s just fiction!” I wonder if they know about Jaws. Or Fifty Shades of Grey. Or anything about how fiction is rooted in reality and how reality is shaped by fiction, or especially about how minors are impacted by the media they consume.
I also wonder if they use that same tired line to defend racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism, anti-semitism, etc. in the media—like, say, writing Captain America as a nazi, or the use of racist caricatures in film (coughs at sausage party and ridiculous six, among countless others), or casting white actors in roles for poc, or glamorizing smoking in movies—or if they just use that line when it’s convenient for them.
And then they have the audacity to say “I would never condone it in real life” when everything they say is a contradiction of that.
Saying that a character looks mature enough, that a relationship looks healthy and loving so how could it possibly be abusive, that x is good and would never take advantage of y, that y wants it too so it’s fine, and all of these bullshit excuses in an attempt to adamantly defend their ship—all of this normalizes the idea that these relationships are okay in real life. All of these are things people say in real life to excuse pedophilia.
And when minors and abuse survivors actually come out and speak out against a ship, and talk about how that ship affects them in real life, shippers ignore them—or even attack them—all because hey, it’s just fiction!
Except: A relationship might exist inside fiction, but how we interpret it and what we do with it is real. It’s wrong to say “it’s just fiction” when “it” doesn’t just involve an idea inside the vacuum of fiction, “it” also involves how you feel and speak about it, and how others react to those feelings and words. So instead of saying “it’s just fiction,” you should just make it easier for everyone and say what you really mean: you don’t care about the consequences of your own actions and you’re going to ship whatever you want, not because it’s okay but because you can get away with it, without it negatively affecting yourself.
i love how everyone assumes that self diagnosis is the result of people wanting to have a mental illness and not the result of people who have mental illnesses desperately wanting something to identify with to make it easier for them to live with it
- Someone: it's too hot
- Me, internally: everyone has forgotten, but I haven't. I haven't forgotten uptown funk. I can't hear those words without getting an unexplainable urge to say 'hot damn.' Maybe nobody forgot. Maybe we all think this. I feel like we need to talk about the influence this song had on all of us.
i really like stickers but at the same time i don’t because once you stick them somewhere that’s it, it’s finished, and i’m just not emotionally stable enough for that responsibility
I have been waiting for this post my whole life.
I was trying to explain this to someone one day and they basically told me I was crazy.
