I REALLY feel like I’m swinging at a wasp’s nest in doing this but I would very much like white and/or non-mlm dgs fans to think about how you treat Ryuunosuke and Kazuma when you make fan content

This is based on the fact that pretty much everyone I’ve ever met in this fandom ships asoryuu so the fandom interpretation is that they’re mlm. This isn’t a problem except some of you are... kind of weird about how you talk about and/or depict two fictional East Asian mlm

Infantilizing and desexualizing Asian men is a problem that countless people with more braincells than I own have talked about endlessly as to why that’s bad. I won’t really go into it here because you can easily find a decent discussion on the topic anywhere on the internet

Yes, it’s infantilizing if you constantly talk about how these characters who are full grown men are babies, and it’s desexualizing if you constantly makes jokes about them being utterly incapable of navigating sexual content or situations

Desexualizing mlm and making sexual attraction between men into something gross, weird, or otherwise undesirable is homophobia. I’m sure we all remember this, right? Ideas like “gay people having sex is weird” or “men having sexual thoughts about men is bad” is homophobic, yeah?

And to be honest, this kind of stuff in this fandom hasn’t shown up in a way that’s easily identified. It starts small and stacks up. I could tell you the things that bother me in fic and art in this fandom, and I feel like most people just won’t get why it comes across like that

Asoryuu fic feels weirdly sanitized and constantly sad (granted the source material isn’t the happiest, hence why I don’t bother so much with this). Ryuu is constantly babied. There’s a weird air of overemphasizing Kaz or Ryuu being incompetent at things.

Kaz’s white outfit (you know the one) is more form-fitting than I expected, admittedly, but it’s really uncomfortable to only ever hear about how gross or weird it is that Kaz has visible muscle mass despite him literally being a sword-wielder with considerable physical strength

Those are just some of the things I notice. Did they make sense? Are these things you’ve noticed? I’m going to assume the answer is no for most people. I didn’t start noticing these things until rather recently because it was pointed out to me, and then I saw *all* of it at once

And I realize now that it’s seriously affecting me in how I feel as an mlm, a Japanese man, and both of these things combined. I’ve been internalizing some of these things and looking back, I can tell some things I’ve said are a result of this internalization

I don’t particularly expect anyone to immediately fix any of these attitudes overnight. But I do hope that people at least take a moment and consider if things that they do, say, and think are harmful

This thread has replies limited because I’m not here to have an argument. Feel free to rt any of this thread, but my main goal was that I wanted to say my piece. You can ignore me if you want, or you can consider if you have things you need to unlearn and stop saying or doing.