there's been an issue in the twst fandom that ive noticed becoming increasingly more prevalent as the fandom has gotten bigger in the past several months - people referring to bigotry and issues within the twst fandom (racism, misogyny, pedophilia, transphobia, etc) as though it's just trivial discourse, fully minimizing these issues instead of actually properly calling them out and discussing them
ESPECIALLY when it comes to the racism within twst, which is absolutely present within both the fanbase and the game itself. when poc in the fandom call out these issues and voice concerns with the representation, particularly with stereotypes, how characters who are poc get treated and portrayed, whitewashing, orientalism, and many other issues present, other fans are overwhelmingly quick to dismiss these concerns, finding ways to excuse both it and their own participation in it. people are so defensive and unwilling to listen, allowing themselves to be ignorant and CONTINUE perpetuating racism because it makes them uncomfortable to actually listen to the people that are being actively harmed. not just the characters and story itself either, but the fact that there's also in general an absolutely rancid amount of racist harassment that's targeted towards fans who are poc, and it is NOT called out nearly enough as it needs to be.
in the past several months, there's also been much of a rise in blatantly pedophilic behavior in the fandom too (sexualization of the young twst characters has always been an issue, much like most of the big issues in the twst fandom and fandom spaces in general, but this has DEFINITELY also increased since the anime release + broadening of the fandom too). there's been a lot of discussion about this on tiktok especially, with recent issues like people taking the fragrantcia trend (which if you don't know, many of the moodboards following this trend are very explicit) and putting child twst characters into it. there's also been a rise in fully grown adults in the twst fandom being called out for self shipping with underage twst characters, and attempting to justify it by claiming things like that "the characters look older", which is contextually clear predatory rhetoric.
the problems with how the twst fandom addresses prejudice and other alarming behaviors lies not only within how these issues are directly minimized, but also how they're minimized with people directing their focus to nonissues instead. a particular example of this is the discourse around headcanons, and how people will continuously reheat discussion about this for the purpose of hating on fan interpretations, most of which are completely harmless and are created by marginalized fans who want to feel properly represented by the characters they enjoy. in hateful "criticisms" surrounding many of these headcanons, people not only wrongfully attack others over things just aren't problematic instead of focusing on things that ARE, but also just generally use these discussions and "criticisms" to out their blatantly bigoted views.
i feel another issue is also how some "attempts" at actually discussing these topics are just sensationalizing them, approaching them in an unserious manner instead of actually starting meaningful discussions that call out direct occurrences of these issues. it brushes over how dangerous these things are, and how much they affect other fans. as previously mentioned, these issues have always existed in fandom spaces, and aren't new to the twst fandom. but there's definitely been an increase in the minimization of these issues as they've become more prevalent with the fandom increasing in size, and it's OUR responsibility to properly acknowledge these problems instead of just treating it as if it's "drama".
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