You're Allowed To Feel Sad, Disappointed Or Lose Some Interest In A Character Because Its No Longer Played

You're allowed to feel sad, disappointed or lose some interest in a character because its no longer played by a specific actor or character.

(Obviously not talking about blatant racism here. Derail this and I'll scream.)

But I mean like. I see people shitting all over anyone who is losing interest in The Witcher because Henry Cavill is no longer Geralt, but at the same time actors will all have very unique ways of portraying the same character, and its perfectly fine to not feel the same way about how a different actor portrays or visualises the same character.

If you prefer the story and portrayal of Steve Rogers' Captain America over Sam Wilson's Captain America, that's fine! They're two completely different stories under the same mantle. You can absolutely respect the story and message of Sam Wilson's Captain America while still preferring the one Steve Rogers' Captain America told.

If you're in love with the way Henry Cavill depicts Geralt, you're not a bad person who holding onto that and choosing not to devalue Liam Hemsworth's interpretation by forcing yourself to consume media you no longer have a vested interest in.

Spider-Man is another prime example. While the core values and details of the Spider-Men stay the same, the specific stories and characters of each Spider-Man are supposed to be different. They're supposed to fit the narrative being told and the larger framework of the universe they are set in.

So many people hated on Tom Holland's Spider-Man because he wasn't the 'OG gutter rat broke bitch' but like. For one, we do actually see those aspects in the story still (Peter taking dumped items off the sidewalk, his small room, stressing about money and replacing things, ect) and for another, he's meant to be different because Spider-Man with The Avengers is different to Spider-Man alone.

Its meant to be a different depiction of the same character.

Its fine not to like one or to prefer the other but it doesn't make it bad media or a bad thing either way.

By the way, censorship won't stop at extreme smut and icky kinks and big bad gays.

Because, that's the problem in kicking a few rocks down the mountainside. Once you trigger a landslide, you can't stop it.

"Proshippers shouldn't be around children." If antis were on the internet as much when I was growing up I would be a lot more bruised by being hounded into thinking my natural dark imagination made me gross and awful...

"Proshippers shouldn't be around children."

Buddy. My bro. My dude.

The children are the proshippers.

When I was as young as eight I would've been classed by modern antis as a proshipper because of my views on fiction, which boiled down to;

Its not real. Reading or writing about murder doesn't make me a murderer. I don't care if someone writes about murder because I know it doesn't make them a murderer either.

As a child I can promise you I did not give a single fuck about the kinds of things antis cry about. Because I was a child. And even as a child I knew the difference between fiction and reality.

Children need to be protected from predators. From overexposure. From exploitation. From damaging societal standards. Children need to be protected from the real life things that are causing them harm. Not from literature.

I lost all respect for antis the day that one said outright said that I, a disabled, fully mature adult was 'basically a child' and any person who was attracted to me was basically a pedo. Because telling disabled people that others being attracted to them is inherently evil is a totally normal, non infantalizing thing to do, right? There's nothing ableist about saying disabled people are 'basically children' right??????

Antis and the media have watered down the meaning of pedophilia to basically nothing. Its a defunct term at this point. It just means anything and everything that anyone wants it to and it makes me so, so angry for the actual victims of true pedophilia and the actual people who are being victimised by the trend of using it as a battering ram.

Neurodivergency and disabilities being weaponised, too, is part of the problem, not a contribution toward a solution. The more you tell people that disabled and neurodivergent people are vulnerable and open to risk the more risk you actually expose them to.

And, frankly, the more you piss them off.

“Proshippers are dangerous to children!”

Me, reading “immoral” books since age 11, 16 now, yet to have killed, raped, or tortured anyone:

Children are not put in danger simply by exposure to specific things. In fact, for many things, the sooner we learn them the better. I know a lot of people are going to interpret this in bad faith and the worst possible way, but;

Children actually need to be exposed to things in order to actually understand them and properly learn about them in a safe manner that will set the groundwork for the rest of their life.

I'll use an example that has absolutely nothing to do with sex or anything 'proship.'

The good old 'the dog went to live on a farm' analogy. When I was younger and my pets died my parents always told me that my pets had gone to live with other families who needed hem more. That pets were like Nanny McPhee; they went where they were needed.

This devastated me.

I spent years wondering what I'd done wrong. Why I wasn't good enough. Why my beloved pets had decided I didn't need or love them anymore. Where had they gone? Why had they gone? Did they love their new families more than me?

Literal years spent plagued with torment until I hit a new school year and we learned properly about death in biology. Then I spent weeks feeling betrayed, ridiculed and stupid because my pets hadn't abandoned me for a more deserving family. They'd up and died.

And death is sad, yes. I would've been sad for weeks. Months, maybe. I'd miss them forever. But I understood death. I would've understood and accepted death far quicker than I did the notion that the pets I loved so much had simply up and decided to fuck off one day.

If my parents had been honest with me they could've used my pets' deaths as opportunities for literally so many things. How to understand and deal with grief. How to understand and accept death. How to mourn. How to reminisce. How to manage and process and understand and accept my emotions. How to ask for comfort and self-soothe.

Instead all they taught me was that they thought I was too stupid to understand things and that I could've trust a word they said anymore.

Honestly the overbearing safety net we trap children in only robs them of opportunities to be healthy, functioning, developed adults. Children do not need to be sheltered from the entire world until we suddenly drop-kick them into it at 16 or 18.

I'm not saying we need to start hounding eight year olds about pornography and fictional shipping. But what we do need to do is safely introduce them to the world they live in and give them the tools needed to live in it.

I've come to the conclusion that antis think about pedophilia and children being involved in sex way, way more than proshippers do.