#but I will never know peace until we can ascribe these headcanons/identities/life experiences to characters in a way that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

musical-chick-13 · 10 months

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My God I am so tired of people only talking about mental illness and/or disability in fiction/as a literary theme when they can use it to back up their terrible male faves by saying that they Weren't That Bad, Actually and They Belong To A Marginalized/Unfairly Demonized Group, So You Need To Be On Their Side.

#it's like the 'oh this female character is a lesbian' thing that people do to get her ''''out of the way'''' of a given m/m pairing #in the sense that they put this idea/headcanon/etc. out there and then never actually DO anything with it #there's no meaningful engagement with that idea and it's so often only done in service of the men #and is so clearly not rooted in any kind of actual understanding of what that life experience is or a genuine desire to see it explored or #represented. like I know. I KNOW. that I talk about this ad nauseum I /KNOW/ okay.#but I will never know peace until we can ascribe these headcanons/identities/life experiences to characters in a way that #doesn't just involve defending or propping up the (frequently horrible) widely-considered-attractive fictional man du jour #I will forever be discontent if we keep doing this thing where we only bring up mental illness/disability when a popular fictional man #is mean and unpleasant as a way of ''''explaining'''' that behavior #(don't get me started on the way people ACTUALLY treat male characters who are CANONICALLY mentally ill/disabled and DEFINITELY #don't get me started on how they treat ANY woman in fiction-or irl let's be honest-who even shows POTENTIAL HINTS of being these things)#...sorry I said that once I saw irl people I'd probably have less of an Urge to Complain but I guess I was wrong #In the Vents #mc13 once again gets frustrated with how mental illness/disability is treated in fandom spaces #(and everywhere)#my fucking god remember when people tried to keep saying that [redacted] was a neurodivergent/mentally ill icon truly I lost #at least half my braincells over that #*sigh* I gotta get over these Symptoms™ so that I can finish my River Has O/C/D fic

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