It's a dark time for fandoms, so on this day I just wanna let you know, to whoever might see, that if you enjoy kaico/kidco, you're awesome. Kaito being able to see past the unpleasant shrinking situation and develop feelings for Shinichi regardless of that because they connect through mutual intellect and sense of justice first and foremost - is a core part of the ship (in my humble opinion).
It's a complicated ship with complicated characters, and there are nuances naturally, I think that only makes the ship better. How some people can see the homoerotic tidbits from canon and completely deny their existence in favor of being moral and pure about an anime yaoi ship that's not even canon is beyond me. You don't have to ship your yaoi ship in a god-honoring way, go fucking ham and ship them in whatever ways make you happy.
Which means if you like the idea of them being cousins (in spite of how much the reveal itself fucking sucks and gosho needs to put the pen down), you guessed it, I also think you're awesome for that.
Your taste in ships doesn't make you a bad person. And yeah it's harder to share your works and discuss your tastes in the minefield that is post-pandemic western fandom spaces, but safe spaces still exist if you look for them. Happy almost cousin reveal anniversary, we survived last year and we'll survive this year too.
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If you're still shipping kaishin and you were on the fence about creating fanworks for kaishin, this is your sign to do it now. The community is in shambles, and we need everyone to hold it together.
There will be a drop in kaishin content, people will abandon ship, abandon their WIPs, purge their old works, etc. It's important that we, who can still create, do. It's time to show the larger fandom and goddamn gosho aoyama that canon holds no power over us.
A lot of what I've said about movie 27 and kaishin being cousins might sound contradictory, so I'll try to clarify. (No one asked but I thought I would set the record straight anyway).
Content warning for discussion of incest in fiction, complaints about the source material, and shipping discourse.
I think the reveal sucked. The way it happened, where it happened, when it happened, it all sucked. Gosho said he planned this from the start, but I don't believe it, for various reasons that I won't get into in this post. Even if he had plan this, it still sucked, the execution was cheap, and waiting for this long to reveal it also sucks.
It's completely understandable that most people (at least in the western fandom) who continue to ship kaishin are doing so by ignoring the reveal. The ship's community is doing fine, at least on tumblr, save for the occasional mockery and shaming, and that can also be reduced if we block liberally. I'm happy that kaishin has such a loyal and passionate fanbase that we can survive something like this.
That being said, I also talk a lot about kaishin with the added perspective of them being cousins. Yes, I'm incorporating this aspect into my headcanon by choice. No, this doesn't mean I think the reveal was good, or even decent. And no, this doesn't mean I'm ignoring the harm of incest in real life. I think this specific fictional case is interesting to write about, that's all there is to it. But I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, so to make it easy to filter out, I tag my cousins kaishin posts with #kaishincest. Please curate your own online experience when the platform allows you to.
The damage this reveal has done to the kaishin community is devastating and permanent, and it was entirely unnecessary. It should've happened way earlier, within the first few years of the series' production, or not at all. And I'm worried that the canon portrayal of Kaito and Shinichi's relationship is going to get way worse due to Gosho forcing sibling-esque banters between them, because he sucks at that. Going by the assumption that them being cousins was decided during the production of movie 27, it makes sense why Conan was acting cruel and out of character in Azure Throne (ch1119-1122), which is the first time Kaito appeared since this change was decided. Their relationship as rivals was perfect, but now they're being written as siblings instead, and it's clearly for the worst. I might elaborate on this in a later post.
In conclusion: I think the reveal sucked, but I'm adding the cousins thing into my personal headcanon anyway, although I completely understand people who choose to reject it.
This is only my speculation, but I think it'll be important that we pick which parts of canon we ignore from now on, because the portrayal of Kaito and Shinichi's relationship in the source material is going to get worse, similarly to what happened to coai long ago. It's going to be important to remember the version of them that we love, and stick to it.
It's kinda funny/sad how all it takes is literally anyone to imply that they're cynical about dcmk canon in my presence, and automatically I'm doomed to spend the next 3 hours ranting about how much I fucking hate this show, and it somehow always ends with me throwing out conspiracy theories which range from "detco plot is intentionally stupid" to "gosho literally didn't create ai/coai".
I'm very normal about dcmk and have a healthy relationship with this fandom.
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So close to blocking the heishin tag even tho I love the ship cuz every time I click on a heishin post that's not a fanart from an account I follow, it's full of people who have a hate boner for kaishin and its shippers. What the fuck is their problem? Literally most people in my kaishin discord server also love heishin, why is that not the case the other way around? It's not like there's a reason to hate each other, neither of our ships have the slightest chance of being canon anyway.
I love looking at heishin fanarts, but maybe it's better to unfollow the tag and just wait for them to trickle in through reblogs? This whole thing is starting to make me despise the ship, but it's not the ship's fault.
One down side of being in the kaishin fandom is I'm now too scared to venture out of it. I might get other hyperfixations briefly and want to engage with the fandoms, but it going to be hard to find a space for myself. Here, I know I'm allowed to exist and be who I am, as long as I'm cautious outside of the ship's bubble. But it won't be this simple in other fandoms, will it?
I still remember my time in the red vs blue fandom. I couldn't carve out a space for myself no matter how hard I tried, because 99% of people in that fandom are either homophobic or anti-fic. It wasn't a new fandom either, red vs blue season 1 came out over 20 years ago.
I don't want to go back to that kind of fandom experience, where I had to be aware of which characters the fandom considered "siblings-coded" or "minor-coded" or "found family incest", and dark stories could only be written if you put a hundred disclaimers about how you definitely don't condone the actions depicted, and that you wrote that work without any intention of it being arousing to anyone in any way. It was miserable, I hated it.
I'm scared that any other fandom I venture into will also be like that, or worse. When only 3 people in the entire fandom wouldn't send a pipe bomb to your mailbox for shipping an adult character they consider minor-coded, it doesn't matter how many people you block, because their intention isn't to stop seeing the things that make them uncomfortable, it's to hurt the people they disagree with, to give themselves righteous gratification.
When the mainstream platforms hate queer ships and the so-called progressive spaces want you dead for indulging in mildly taboo fiction in your own little space, there's no where to go. And that's exactly what they want.
