"X fantasy villain is a school shooter & those fans deserve bullying" takes infuriate me, as someone who was in hs when columbine happened. part of the reason why is that in addition to the horror of the event itself, the net aftermath for freaks & loners & goths was... awful

i use the term "freaks" because that's what we called ourselves, at least lots of people from my age & region. we were a mix of punks and goths and music nerds and arty kids and basically anyone who didn't feel like they fit in completely. we were, by and large, harmless weirdos.

the new school policies after columbine were a combo of safety theater (manifesting as racist/ableist profiling & no more rights to privacy) and straight-up "kick the freaks" stuff. admin not only turned a blind eye to anti-"goth" bullying, the new atmosphere guaranteed it.

liking non-mainstream or dark music/comics, being "weird looking," being "quiet"... put you LITERALLY onto a list at school. you could get punished (including suspended or EXPELLED) for wearing clothes that made somebody nervous. this exact shirt got me a full week's detention:

there's a term for the policies that got pushed after columbine, and it's "zero tolerance." zero tolerance policies got kids expelled for swiss army knives, for nerf guns, for jokes... and for admitting to suffering depression. they were a nightmare and remain so to this day.

decades after columbine, the truth came out. the killers weren't goths or "trench coat mafia" or bullied weirdos. they were just... killers. but still we cling to this mythology, that bullied goth kids who like dark fiction and sad music are dangerous: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/04/19/bullies-black-trench-coats-columbine-shootings-most-dangerous-myths/?outputType=amp

"loki fans are just like school shooter stans" is not only a gross fucking take because we are talking about MYTHOLOGY AND SUPERHERO FILMS, not ACTUAL REAL LIFE MURDET, it's also gross because it's just another way to lay blame on "weirdos" with the "wrong" taste in fiction.

liking dark fic or sympathizing with evil SPACE WIZARDS or exploring some sad, strange, ugly feelings in totally fictional, non-harmful ways.... doesn't make you a school shooter or a school shooter stan. seems to me it's far more likely to make you a victim of bullying.

using columbine as a stick to beat "weird" fans with is just the epitome of misguided cruelty. it's also a misrepresentation of how fiction actually influences reality, of power & gender dynamics, of what villains often represent in fantasy (an aspect of self!)... & so on.

a lot of people have accurately added that the columbine shooters were neo-n*zis, which adds a horrible layer to both past & present. overt, real, hateful white supremacists are EVERYWHERE rn. and antis don't have a problem comparing them to, like... queer women who cosplay loki

to which i can only beg them: get a grip

fyi my point is not "goths are the real victims of white supremacy." it's that "snapewives are like columbine shooter stans" is a take based on a harmful myth about the shooters being "weirdos." when you say that "weirdos" did columbine you're MISSING THE NEO-N*ZI IDEOLOGY PART

neo-n*zis don't want you to stan loki they want to kill people so can we let fans live and put our political energy into actual politics, please, the end