#coping through fiction
It’s honestly pathetic and hypocritical how antis will post their own life story and use it as a way of saying “This is why you shouldn’t ship this” and treat it as if their life and feelings are the only ones that matter and are totally universal. They talk about how much they protect and love survivors, etc.
Yet when a survivor posts about their own trauma and how ships have helped them navigate and come to terms with their own trauma or how equating fiction to their abuse is degrading and causes more harm to them than good, they’re told…
“Cope in private” nevermind the fact that shipping can form a community and help them form bonds and friendships that can help get them through their trauma. This also basically amounts to telling them to go it alone and that they aren’t allowed to have a community.
“Stop hurting other survivors” nevermind the fact that antis have no problem hurting other survivors when they say this.
“Stop using your trauma to hurt other survivors.” Nevermind the fact that antis use their own trauma to hurt other surviviors.
etc.
Why is it that antis can treat their own personal stories and experiences as absolute truth yet a shipper who came from similar circustance isn’t allowed to?
Take a good long look in the mirror. If something is personally triggering to you, great. Blacklist it. Block it. Don’t follow people who post it. You don’t have the right to tell other people what spaces they are allowed to have or how they’re alllowed to do something.
i think it’s funny when people are like “dark fiction or tragic fiction is ok if it’s about overcoming trauma or showing the outcome of a mistake” bc like that feels weirdly christian (though not saying only christianity promotes that) like it must always have a “moral” or whatever and meanwhile aristotle’s idea of catharsis is like “hey sometimes people just feel better and have their negative emotions purged when they see fucked up shit happening to an innocent fictional character that did no wrong in the story because as a fictional story literally no one is getting hurt”
That is exactly why the greeks wrote tragedy. They believed catharsis was the expelling of negative emotions. So they wrote heartbreaking plays where no one was happy in the end because sometimes life just sucks.
Sometimes you don’t wanna listen to Mamma Mia and laugh, you wanna listen to This Impossible Year and cry. And that’s okay.
