romantic (advertising purposes only)

Fiction is fiction, I'll give them that, and they can write whatever. But some people should take off their shipping goggles, take a step back, and reevaluate why they're so confortable, in real life, with certain forms of abuse or with grooming.

my stance on this is that people are welcome to ship whatever they want and write whatever they want, no matter how kinky, but it's important as a collective fandom to remember that this is real person fiction, and that all three elements of that term are important.

however compelling anyone finds the dynamic between mark and oscar, it is ultimately fictional, and using mark webber's actual history of being groomed as "evidence" for why they might be real is extremely distasteful to me. and i get that it's probably not that deep, but in the same way that fandom treats jos verstappen's crimes and history of violence, much of which was directed at his wives and children, as a fun part of max's tragic backstory rather than proof of his abuse, i think that portraying what happened between mark and ann as a sexy thing that can fuel shipping is distasteful at best and irresponsible at worst.