Read on Twitter
Okay I wanna discuss akuroku for a second, so, that’s what this thread is gonna be.
First, it’s WILD to come back to KH 10 yrs later & find that one of the most beloved ships that was basically considered a default will now get you death threats if you even mention it in a sentence that doesn’t end with “is the literal devil and the source of all suffering”
And the arguments that I’ve seen commonly used to justify that treatment just? Don’t make any sense?? Which partially I think is bc of how fandom culture has shifted to this weird mentality of “fictional people = real people”
& a misunderstanding of the scope and impact niche/inherently self-indulgent fan content has vs mainstream media + accepted social norms. But that’s too big to get into here.
People seem to forget that cartoon characters aren’t bound by the rules of reality... You can take or leave things you don’t like, expand on something you felt the author fell short with, completely reimagine a universe or history or anything else down to their favorite color.
There are any number of things that might appeal to someone about a character, dynamic, or ship, for any number of reasons. And in a series like KH, there's a lot that's not explicitly stated by canon & is left up to the imagination.
What it all comes down to is that different people are gonna have different interpretations. And that’s okay! You can look at Ax being in BBS and decide that you won’t ship him w/ Rox bc you read him as too old.
I can look at it, say “nah” and just decide he’s whatever age is comfortable for me bc he’s a cartoon who was stuck in an ageless state for an unspecified amt of time & bc nothing in their actual dynamic has ever read as age gap to me.
Nobody gets to demand that everyone else share their interpretation. For ex it bugs me that Sai/Ax is cheered as WholesomeTM when 99% of Sai’s screentime was dedicated to belittling Ax’s feelings, dehumanizing ppl he cared about, making backhanded jabs at his value...
& generally being a dick to everyone as far as I could tell. But I can realize that others like him/the ship for their own reasons... I may not agree w/ their reading, but I have no right to bully them into catering to my own views on it.
So I don’t follow ppl who post heavily abt them or look through their tags. And as a result I see almost none of it & stuff that bothers me doesn’t pop up on my feed. It’s so much healthier to just stay in your lane & block.
And since I’m already painting a target on my back I just wanna say it’s not even my ship but I’m so ??? over terraven getting the same treatment. Even if the ages of 16/20 were canon, which they’re not, that’s literally the exact same ages as Aurora/Phillip
who are in the *same game* & half the gap of Rapunz/Eugene, and nobody is boycotting KH for supporting those relationships. Hmm.
In conclusion, ship & let ship, if shipping doesn’t make you an ally then it also doesn’t make you an abuser, curate your own space & don’t be a bully. It's fandom! Have fun w/ the things you love instead of attacking others.
