#fandsc

When we say "your personal dislike is not a good enough reason to force other people to stop shipping something"

that does not mean you have to start making up bullshit reasons for why the thing you hate "is actually totally harmful and immoral!"

The appropriate response to "your personal feelings are not justification for being a shitstain" is not "then I'll just make it so it's not just my personal feelings anymore", it's LEARNING TO LIVE WITH PEOPLE SHIPPING THINGS OTHER THAN YOUR OTP, JUST LIKE THE REST OF US DID.

This has been a PSA to all the people who just coincidentally (teehee) find reasons for why every ship in the fandom that shares a character with their OTPs is "problematic" (whether that involves "abuse" between rivals or enemies, "pedophilia" between two adults, "incest" between childhood friends, or "homophobia" simply for being m/f).

What if we just stopped calling aged-up characters "aged up" and call them what they are - adult characters?

Firstly, calling them "aged-up" implies that they are still minors in some form, despite the canon of the fanfic clearly stating that they are full-fledged adults.

That's how people get away with saying dumb shit like "aged-up minors are still minors" even if the fic is about filing taxes after picking their kid up from kindergarten, or whatever Some People think adults do.

Secondly, it implies that the canon of the original work holds some sort of authority over the facts within fanworks, and that nothing established within the fanwork matters if it doesn't align with canon.

If someone can fling shit your way for writing about future versions of the highschoolers from Bleach, they can also fling shit your way for your Hogwarts AU, or your Loki/Gordon Ramsey art, or your trans!Character fic.

So I'm thinking that I'm gonna stop lending validity to those arguments and call adult characters adults.

"these are just aged-up minors", they're adults. "they're 16 in canon", the characters Light Yagami and Ryu, of the fic Light Yagami X Ryu 4Evah, are 30+ from start to end.

That's it. "Just Because I Wrote So" was enough for the og authors to establish their canon, and it's enough for you to establish yours. OG fiction and fanfiction are both equally made up.

Did somebody miss the whole, like........ 5 seasons’ worth of the part where “fusions are brand-new individuals, separate from the people who formed them” was confirmed, or.

I am looking, unfortunately. 

OP went on to say “if you look at that and are attracted to it, there’s something wrong with you!!!!!!” and I agree, but not for the reasons they’d think. I’d expect to see these kinds of things in horror movies. Big eugh.

Disclaimer: This is not, in any way, here to defend the sexualization of children.

The point I’m trying to make is that anime characters aren’t a realistic enough depiction of reality to the point where it would confuse the human brain into conflating them with real children on any significant level. It’s both stupid and offensive to treat crimes against fictional characters the same as crimes against real children, if not because the fictional one doesn’t have feelings and sentience, then at least because they don’t even look similar enough.

Case in point: fucking loOK AT MIDORIYA over there oh my god im dying WHY DID I MAKE THIS, it’s going to fucking haunt me forever

Real talk: lots of artists, especially cartoonists, purposely exaggerate and distort human features because it makes it easier to express movement and emotion without sacrificing too much speed and energy. It’s optimal and it’s effective. What this means, though, is that any connection we form with characters are purely symbolic, and likely related to some deep metaphorical emotional need rather than any physical one. 

People who fall in love with anime bishies are attracted to the symbol of unconditional love and whatever personality traits they find attractive. People who imagine being best friends with their favourite characters are comforted by the idea of being supported and accepted by someone they respect and admire. Generally none of this is reliant on appearances, but rather personality and their story itself, although aesthetically pleasing composition and colour makes us more receptive to it, because humans naturally love to look at beautiful things. But even then, because we are aware we are looking at a piece of art and not a real person, the “attraction” is reliant on how we judge the artistic quality and style, rather than what we’d find attractive in a real human.

Note that I have not been talking about specifically “child” characters, but rather all sorts of characters. That’s because this is a rule I’ve observed in general, with any kind of bond to any kind of fictional characters, and I have yet to be presented with any proof that this would be different with characters that are more deformed or have a smaller Age stat. I’m sure there’s people out there that are extremely affected by those details and will conflate those characters with real children, but that, and assuming it’s true for everyone, are not the norm.

P.S. I’m so sorry about my shoddy photoshopping. I mostly just used Liquify very liberally. This isn’t a scientific graph or anything, I just had way too much time on my hands, and was way too bewildered by the implication that anime characters apparently do look like real children(!?), to just let this go.

I'd rather be a fujin than racist tbh. I'd rather be a fujin than misogynist. I'd rather identify as the Japanese term for "person with m/m ships" than lie and demonize thousands of Japanese women over western misinformation.